As this week's election fueled Democratic upsets nationwide, nowhere was the shift to blue more vivid than in Michigan's long-red Oakland County.

Once solidly Republican, Oakland County had been easing toward the middle from its conservative past, but Tuesday's returns swung the meter hard, electing numerous Democrats up and down county ballots.

In one of the most surprising results, the election gave Democrats their first majority on the county board of commissioners in more than 40 years.

"That hasn't existed since bell bottoms and leisure suits were all the rage," said an exuberant Dave Woodward, the Democrats' county commissioner from Royal Oak.

Woodward is the Democrats' caucus chair, so he now commands an 11-10 majority on the county board. The shift from red to blue will change how Oakland County deals with its neighbors in Wayne and Macomb counties, on issues from mass transit to job creation, Woodward said.

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"Oakland County has been a barrier to regional progress for far too long. That’s going to change on Jan. 1," he said.

Tuesday's election also gave key victories to other Democrats, many of them women who upset male incumbents.

Among the signs the county is turning blue:

Democrats now hold three of the five state Senate seats in Oakland County, after flipping two seats in Tuesday’s election.

All four congressional districts with a footprint in Oakland County will be held by Democrats come Jan. 1, with both the 8th District and the 11th District flipping from Republican on Tuesday.

Gov.-elect Gretchen Witmer outpolled Bill Schuette by nearly 17 points in Oakland County.

Oakland voted for the Democratic candidates for attorney general, secretary of state and U.S. senator by wide margins.

The Democratic candidates for state school board and university boards won in Oakland County.

Democrats will now hold seven of the 14 state House seats in the county after they flipped two state House seats from red to blue.

Republicans still hold the county executive and sheriff offices, but Dems hold the county clerk, treasurer, prosecutor and water resources commissioner.

The trend started a generation ago. Over the last 25 years, county voters gave presidential margins to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. And in 2008, voters flipped from Republican to Democrat several county offices, including treasurer and clerk.

Related: Oakland County sees huge voter turnout and a blue wave of winners

Still, Oakland's top office remains firmly, for now, with County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, whose 26 years in the top job made the former county prosecutor a symbol of conservatives' traditional hold on Oakland turf. Patterson's current four-year term expires in 2020.

Until Tuesday, the 21-member Oakland County Commission seemed equally untouchable — especially after Republicans in 2010 forced several Democrats from office through a controversial gerrymandered redistricting plan, with lines so extreme that it took an act of the Legislature to overcome legal challenges.

This week, Democratic upsets had party activists as well political science gurus saying Oakland County had finally flipped, from pale red to, well, at least light blue.

With Michigan a swing state in national politics, that means Oakland County — the second most populous in Michigan after Wayne — should become a focus of national attention in the presidential election of 2020, said John Klemanski of Auburn Hills, a professor of political science at Oakland University.

"Everybody talks about Macomb County as a bellwether, but I like looking at Oakland County to understand the present and future of politics in Michigan," Klemanski said.

"As the population trends continue — more young people moving in, more minorities, more immigrants — at some point, Oakland County is going to be considered solid blue.

Patterson still looms

"You still have Brooks Patterson up there, and a lot of Democrats have been comfortable with him. But when he leaves, the GOP is going to have to find someone who is as bold and charismatic as he has been, or they’re going to lose that office," Klemanski said.

Reacting to the flipped majority on the county board, Patterson said in a statement Wednesday: "My administration has always reached across the aisle" for bipartisan cooperation, especially when passing budgets, and "we will continue to do so." Patterson said he'd work with Democrats to create high-tech jobs, boost government efficiency, and improve the health and quality of life for county residents.

Patterson, 79 and in frail health, has equivocated about whether he will run again. But regardless of his age and political success, the county's new hue just put his job up for grabs — as well as that of County Sheriff Michael Bouchard, another veteran Republican in county politics — said Vicki Barnett, chair of the Oakland County Democratic Party and a former challenger for Patterson's job.

Reached Wednesday night, Barnett couldn't help but say: "Too bad the Oakland County executive election wasn't this week" instead of in 2016, when Patterson outpolled Barnett, 54 percent to 46 percent.

Just as they were nationwide, female volunteers and voters were crucial to the blue wave in Oakland County, said Barnett and others.

Two years ago, Lori Goldman of Bloomfield Township founded an activist group of liberal Oakland County women called Fems for Dems. For months before Tuesday's election, dozens of members gathered weekly at Goldman's house to call voters. Others went door to door, talking up female Democratic candidates in key districts of Oakland County. On Tuesday, Goldman threw an election party for about 70 volunteers.

"We're all exhausted now but euphoric — we felt very strongly about our candidates as representing what’s right and good and moral, and they won," she said Wednesday night.

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"I’m not discouraged that the margins were slim because in a gerrymandered state, we still were able to pull off victories in all of the races that we were involved in.

"We were thrilled that all three ballot proposals passed, too, by wonderful margins. You saw Republicans as well as Democrats voting for those, wanting to make elections more fair," Goldman said.

Stunning turnout

The essence of Fems for Dems' message to voters? Shake off complacency, get informed, get registered and vote. Sure enough, the turnout in Oakland County was unprecedented, said Oakland University political scientist David Dulio, who is director of OU's Center for Civic Engagement.

"Voter turnout was over 64%. That is stunningly high for a midterm election," Dulio said. By comparison, Oakland County's turnout for previous midterm elections was 48 percent in 2014 and 51 percent in 2010, he said. Not only did more Democrats turn out, but "no doubt some Republicans didn't," he said.

Overall, as Oakland County turns red to blue, "it's trending to have a fiscally conservative but more socially liberal swath of voters" than in other Republican strongholds such as the Upper Peninsula, Dulio said.

On the county board, the four flipped seats include District 16 at Oakland County's east end: comprising Clawson, the south half of Troy and a sliver of Royal Oak. Upsetting Republican incumbent Wade Fleming was Democrat Penny Luebs, a social worker who has been Clawson's longest-serving mayor.

"I had so much support already in Clawson, so I spent my time in Troy," knocking on doors and talking to voters, Luebs said. She also spoke at countless community meetings, Luebs said. Without spending much money, she won the old-fashioned way — wearing out shoe leather while walking to meet voters, Luebs said.

Near the west end of the county, another county board seat flipped to the Democrats in District 9: comprising Novi and tiny Novi Township. The story there, in the political arc of one female baby boomer, is a telling example of Oakland County's inexorable shift from red to blue.

A boomer flops

The winner was Democrat Gwen Markham, a retired manufacturing executive and former member of the Novi City Council, who unseated incumbent Republican Hugh Crawford.

Not many voters knew that Markham is the daughter of Oakland County's first county executive, the late Dan Murphy, who served in the office from 1974 to 1992 — as a Republican. His daughter called Murphy a "moderate, very moderate" member of the GOP.

Yet, when she decided to get politically active about six years ago, Markham said, "it was very clear to me that the Republican Party had diverged so far from my values that I'm a Democrat. By that time, my father was no longer with us.

"But I did tell my mother I was going to do this, and she was very supportive," she said, adding: "I've never looked back."

Markham, as well as her district, shifted from red to blue. Now, the pundits, professors and politicians are watching Michigan's most affluent county more closely than ever.

Only time, and the next election, will tell whether Oakland County edges back to its red Republican roots — or never looks back.

Contact Bill Laitner: blaitner@freepress.com