Michigan and Targeting Persuasion Efforts

Q3: Voting Rights Enacted in 2018

In 2018 the Michigan voters approved ballot question 3, which added eight voting policies to the state constitution. This year, given the efforts of President Trump, voting rights will be a major campaign topic.

Comparing Q3 margins with Trump margins in 2016

Support for the 2018 voting rights ballot question was clearly stronger in the precincts where Trump’s support in the 2016 election was lower.

In the following graphs I look at the margin of support for Trump in 2016 and for the YES on Q3 in 2018:

• x: percent Trump votes minus Clinton votes, per total votes cast
• y: percent YES vote minus NO votes, per total votes cast

(For example, if Trump got 56% of the votes and Clinton 40%, the value on the x axis, is 16%. Similarly, if the YES vote was 48% and the NO vote was 52%, then the value on the y axis is -4%.)

Here are the results for precincts, statewide:

Using Outliers to Identify Targets for Persuasion

Here is the idea: a particular margin of support from Trump in 2016 gives a prediction for the margin of support for the YES vote in 2018. But if the actual level of support for YES in 2018 was higher than predicted, then that may suggest that the precinct cares more about voting rights than the “average” precinct, and hence, some 2016 Trump voters in that precinct may be willing to vote this time for Biden.

Higher than expected YES vote in 2018 may lead to higher than expected Biden vote in 2020…

Example: the First Congressional District

Here are the precincts from the first congressional district, and a line showing the negative relationship between Trump margin in 2016 versus YES margin in 2018. Those precincts where the actual YES vote was 5% or more than expected are shown in blue; the others are in light green.

And here is a map of where those precincts are: