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DETROIT — If Donald Trump wins Michigan, he has a 95% chance of winning the 2024 election, according to numbers guru Nate Silver.
This explains the Trump campaign practically camping out in the Great Lakes State.
It was Grand Rapids where the former president held his first rally after being shot in Butler, Pa., and welcoming Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate.
It was Howell where Trump gave a message on law and order alongside several Michigan sheriffs.
And Tuesday it will be Flint where Trump holds his first town hall since Sunday’s discovery of a second would-be assassin.
“We have become our own bellwether of a traditional voter,” Michigan-based pollster Ed Sarpolus, a 52-year veteran of public opinion, told The Post. “We have labor, we have the black voter, a little bit of everybody. If you can’t win in Michigan, how are you going to win in North Carolina?”
Silver’s analysis was amplified by Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat running neck-and-neck with Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers for Michigan’s open Senate seat. Slotkin struck a worried tone Saturday in an email titled “Nate Silver’s Michigan analysis.”
Slotkin put these lines in bold text: “Trump’s chance of winning if he wins Michigan? 95.1% – the highest of any seriously competitive swing state.”
She continued: “There is no holding the Senate without winning Michigan. There is no winning the White House without winning Michigan. And the better Elissa Slotkin does, the better Kamala Harris does in Michigan.”
For Harris, Michigan is not quite as pivotal. A Wolverine State victory would give her a 77% chance of winning the entire race.
Sarpolus said that in Michigan, Republicans start with about 52% of the white vote. How other groups vote and in what numbers often decide who wins.
“As long as the white vote only breaks 52% Republican, and people of color turn out, the Democrats will win statewide” typically.
Polls show the Michigan race well within the margin of error. Silver gives Trump the slightest edge in Michigan. Sarpolus says it’s “50-50.”
Michigan was pivotal in Trump’s 2016 win over Hillary Clinton. He won the state by about 10,000 votes that year.
Trump grew his 2020 vote total over 2016 — but so did the Democrats. President Biden won Michigan by about 150,000 votes.
Democratic strategist James Carville has said Democrats need to be winning by 3 percentage points in the popular vote to have an Electoral College lead. Silver finds Harris ahead by 2 percentage points, 48.6% to 46.4%.
Sarpolus took it even further.
“Democrats cannot ever win the Electoral College unless they beat the Republican by 4 points,” he said. “This will be a turnout election.”
Another Michigan-based pollster, Bernie Porn of EPIC-MRA, disputed Silver’s read on events.
“I would question that,” Porn told The Post. “North Carolina is dead even. Georgia, I think Trump is up a point or two. We had Trump up a point in Michigan last month. Arizona and Nevada are up for Harris.”
Porn concluded: “There’s just a large mix of potential outcomes. It raises the question about why Michigan would be such a central focal point of Nate Silver’s analysis.”
Sarpolus thinks there’s a good answer to that.
“Everything you see in Michigan is a reflection of what it will take to win,” he said. The Great Lakes State is a microcosm of the national race.
Sarpolus noted Michigan is majority white (73%), and Republicans win about 52% of the white vote. Democrats win with heavy turnout in Michigan — and will need it nationwide.
“So in order for a Democrat to win, to offset the 52% white vote, which is a majority of the vote, they have to get close to a 53-54% majority elsewhere,” Sarpolus said.