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Opinion | US election: what does Michigan’s coronavirus experience say about Donald Trump’s hopes at the polls?
- Most voters in the Midwestern state have given broad support to Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s Covid-19 restrictions
- The pandemic and racial protests are Michigan voters’ main concerns, which is at odds with the president’s view that they are secondary to opening the economy
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As the US presidential election campaign nears its conclusion, and Covid-19 infections surge across the nation, interest has intensified in the handful of “battleground” states which, under the electoral college system, will ultimately decide the election’s result.
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In 2016, Donald Trump won in Michigan by 0.3 per cent, his smallest margin nationally. In 2020, the state has been constantly in the headlines as he feuds with its Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, over her relatively tough and extended pandemic shutdown orders.
In May, when a few hundred protesters, some carrying guns, descended on the state capitol demanding that she lift her state of emergency, he tweeted “LIBERATE MICHIGAN” in support.
Most recently and dramatically, when 13 men belonging to militia groups were arrested for plotting to kidnap Whitmer and “try” her for being a tyrant, Trump called her Covid-19 restrictions “draconian”, said that she “wants to be a dictator” and responded to chants at one of his Michigan rallies of “Lock her up!” – a signature feature of his 2016 campaign, referring to Hillary Clinton – with “Lock them all up!”.
So much for headlines. The reality on the ground would seem to vindicate Whitmer. In May, after two months of pandemic restrictions, 86 per cent of Michiganders surveyed said Covid-19 was a threat (not “a hoax”), and 69 per cent approved of her control measures while 22 per cent opposed them.
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