By Zachary Gorchow
President of Michigan Operations
Posted: November 22, 2016 3:42 PM

Before putting the 2016 election to bed, it seemed worthwhile to review some blog posts through the year to revisit what I had wrong since that happened more than I would like and on occasion what I had right.

As reporters, we review and critique candidates, elected officials, pollsters, political consultants and much more, it’s only fair to look in the mirror.

This was an election year that busted all conventional wisdom. As part of a media panel this fall the day after the first presidential debate, one of the questions was who we thought won that first encounter between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

I said at the time that by any traditional measure, Ms. Clinton mopped the floor with him. But then I also said that seemingly every time this year I thought Mr. Trump had erred or suffered a major setback, that usually proved not to be the case, so in the end I was uncomfortable saying who really won because Mr. Trump was tearing up all the usual rules in elections and writing new ones.

That’s the kind of year it was.

THE FIEGER-TRUMP COMPARISON WAS FLAWED: In February, I compared Mr. Trump to Geoffrey Fieger, the 1998 nominee for governor in Michigan, because of their penchant for trashing the establishment in their party in caustic, insulting terms. I suggested Mr. Trump was poised to do to Michigan Republicans what Mr. Fieger did to Michigan Democrats in 1998 – wreck the entire ticket.

Ooof. Talk about a whiff.

Not only did Mr. Trump win the presidency and put Michigan in the Republican column for the first time since 1988, but Republicans maintained all their seats in the U.S. House and held onto the 63-47 majority they won in the 2014 election for the Michigan House, only the second time in the term limits era that Democrats failed to gain seats in the Michigan House in the presidential cycle.

Yes, Mr. Trump’s style was very similar to Mr. Fieger’s. But the comparison failed for at least two reasons.

One, the pure hatred Republicans hold for Ms. Clinton was far more intense and widespread than the dislike Democrats held for Mr. Fieger’s opponent, two-term Republican Governor John Engler. Yes, some Democrats hated Mr. Engler, but people at Fieger rallies were not en masse calling for his imprisonment. Mr. Engler pulled more than 60 percent of the vote with a solid majority of the state content with his record and unwilling to hand the keys to Mr. Fieger.

Two, 1998 does not equal 2016. The partisan divide, while strong then, was not what it is now and there were a greater number of independent-minded voters.

Most Republicans in the end rallied to Mr. Trump. And enough voters who supported President Barack Obama either stayed home or flipped to Mr. Trump to put him over the top.

CORRECT ABOUT THE REPUBLICANS LIKELY TO KEEP THE STATE HOUSE, WRONG ABOUT DEMOCRATS MAKING GAINS: Everyone got this one wrong. Privately, House Republicans were telling people around town that they expected to win 61 seats in the closing weeks of the election, down from 63. That still would have represented a great performance for them by holding Democrats to less than the five-seat gain they have averaged in the term limits era in presidential election years, especially with all the open seats where term limits deprived the GOP of incumbents to seek re-election.

Michigan Republican Party Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel publicly predicted a 57-53 Republican majority in the House. And given that Republicans were not going on the offense anywhere with their investments, it seemed impossible that Democrats would not gain seats.

That said, it appeared consistent throughout the year that Democrats were going to fall short of the nine seats they needed to gain for majority. Five of the seats that were in play were in Macomb County or north of Clare, and it was clear Mr. Trump was going to dominate in those areas, creating bad dynamics for Democrats. And as I wrote, while Republicans have emerged as the dominant party in once competitive outstate areas, Democrats, while on the rise, have yet to gain sufficient strength in higher-income, higher-educated suburban areas traditionally dominated by the GOP to make seats there truly competitive.

It was easy to come up with how Democrats could gain four or five seats. But nine? No.

What turned the conventional wisdom on its ear and left Democrats with the same 47 seats as they had after the 2014 elections was Mr. Trump swamping the state outside of Oakland and Wayne counties. Subtract those two counties and Mr. Trump won the rest of the state by a whopping 10 percentage points. Promising Democratic candidates were buried.

RIGHT ABOUT WHAT TRUMP WOULD NEED TO DO TO WIN MICHIGAN, WRONG ABOUT WHETHER HE WOULD DO IT: In June, I looked at what Mr. Trump’s roadmap to victory in Michigan would look like. I said he would need to hugely outperform the traditional Republican vote in Macomb County, need a considerably weaker turnout in Detroit, crank up turnout with white voters outstate and need third party candidates to siphon away support from Ms. Clinton.

Every one of those things happened.

But I thought it unlikely that all four of those factors would in fact occur and said then that Mr. Trump was unlikely to win the state (*face flushes, awkwardly loosens tie*).

‘KNOLLENBERGMAN EFFECT’: I didn’t flat-out predict Jack Bergman was going to win the 1st U.S. House District Republican primary, but I feel good about this post.

POLITICAL REALIGNMENT ON STATE HOUSE SEATS: In September, I wrote that Michigan Democrats were facing serious problems in the Michigan House because outstate, mostly white, traditionally competitive districts with relatively low percentages of voters with bachelor’s degrees were moving in large numbers to the Republicans. Additionally, Democrats had not yet built enough momentum in suburban, increasingly diverse, highly educated districts traditionally in the GOP column to flip them to their side. That scenario played out.

MARINO ATTACKS DIDN’T STICK: After the Democrats bombarded Republican Steve Marino of Harrison Township with attacks based off of a series of clandestinely obtained audio recordings in which he made a number of statements he later recanted or were politically problematic, or both, I wrote that it seemed like a great bet for Democrats to win both Macomb County House seats under heavy competition. So massive was the Trump wave in Macomb County that the Republicans won both and neither was close.

Ugh.

RECOGNITION OF TRUMP SURGE, CHANCE TO WIN: On November 1, I wrote that Mr. Trump had stabilized in Michigan and nationally, Republicans were coming home and that had complicated the ability of House Democrats to make big gains in the Michigan House (true). I also wrote that Ms. Clinton remained the favorite (meh). Then on November 3, I wrote about how absentee ballot numbers out of Detroit were way down from 2012, how that could portend big trouble for Ms. Clinton and that several signs suggested Mr. Trump would make the election close.

Better late than never, I suppose.

This year was a reminder of the stock market axiom that past performances are not a guarantee of future results.