Donald Trump has struggled to unify Michigan's traditional Republican coalition. | Getty Why Clinton is trouncing Trump in Michigan Trump will be in Michigan Friday, hoping to deliver on big primary promises — but so far he has struggled mightily.

A Republican presidential candidate hasn’t won Michigan since 1988, but Donald Trump promised he was a different kind of Republican — the winning kind.

Trump was right about being different. He was wrong about winning.


Trump not only trails Hillary Clinton statewide (the last Michigan EPIC-MRA poll had him trailing 36 percent to Clinton’s 46), he’s losing in some of the state’s Republican strongholds, including a stretch of Western Michigan that has long been the safest of GOP territories. Indeed, the Clinton campaign is so confident in the state that it isn’t buying any advertisements there, nor are Clinton-associated super PACs.

The GOP nominee promised that his mixed brand of populism and nationalism would keep the Republican base intact while — via opposition to trade deals and a promise to “Make America[n Manufacturing] Great Again” — bring in disaffected voters and eat into the Democrats’ coalition in a way his predecessors couldn’t.

But so far, the opposite has happened.

Trump has struggled to unify the state’s traditional coalition, starting at the top. Earlier this summer, Trump's campaign quietly reached out asking for support from Republican Gov. Rick Snyder. But the request was rebuffed, with Snyder’s office saying the governor wanted to focus on Michigan and not get into the 2016 presidential race. (The two men have a frosty history, with Snyder declining to endorse in the GOP primary and withholding his support for Trump even after he became the GOP nominee.)

Polling tells a similar story. Trump hasn’t been able to rally older men or whites, usually reliable voting blocs for Republicans. "He's running behind the Republican base and even among white, older men he's not running as strong as he should be," Michigan EPIC-MRA pollster Bernie Porn said.

In 2012, Mitt Romney won support from 58 percent of white men and 52 percent of voters 65 percent and older but still lost the state 54 percent to 44 percent. An Aug. 16 Mitchell Research & Communications poll found Trump virtually tied among voters ages 60 to 69. And among voters ages 70 and older, Clinton actually ran ahead of Trump 47 percent to 38 percent.

And while Trump’s economic speech in Detroit earlier this month may have played relatively well nationally, it likely rubbed some in the local audience the wrong way, according to the chief of staff for one of the state’s top elected Republicans.

“He came into Detroit and he gave a big speech at the Detroit Economic Club, which is a lot of your establishment Republicans and frankly a lot of people who have helped the resurgence of Detroit and make all their money and businesses on Detroit’s comeback. And he just came in and talked about how Detroit’s in awful shape and it’s Hillary’s fault,” the top aide said. “And while that probably worked on the national level, for the people who live and breathe Detroit every day, that didn’t go over well.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to a POLITICO inquiry.

It’s Western Michigan, though, where Trump’s struggles are eye-popping. A Mitchell Research & Communications poll released Wednesday found Trump trailing Clinton in Western Michigan 45 percent to 40 percent. The same poll around roughly the same time in 2012 found Romney leading President Barack Obama in the same region 50 percent to 40 percent. More counties in that region (home to Kent, Berrien and Ottawa counties) went to Romney in 2012 than Obama in 2008.

The EPIC-MRA poll had even worse news from Western Michigan for Trump, showing him trailing Clinton by 11 points in the region.

“It does not surprise me that there's some apprehension about Trump [there]. Because it's not their kind of style,” said Saul Anuzis, a former Michigan Republican Party chairman. “The Dutch Reform kind of West Michigan style is much more like Mike Pence. It's more reserved, it's more quiet. If you look at the west side politicians, they're more deliberate, they're more quiet, they're more reserved, they're more Dutch.”

Trump’s promises of mass crossover appeal have not yet materialized either. The Mitchell Research & Communications poll found Clinton trouncing Trump among African-Americans 88 percent to 8 percent. The Democratic nominee also leads Trump among households 61 percent to 30 percent, that poll found.

Hillary Clinton is making inroads with traditionally Republican constituencies in Michigan. | Getty

Several Republicans contacted for this story said that, for a GOP candidate to win, he would have to turn out voters in strongly conservative western counties while also winning once-Republican counties farther east that now trend blue, like Macomb County, the birthplace of the Reagan Democrats, and neighboring Oakland County. The good news for Trump is he has a slight lead in Macomb County, 44 percent to 40 percent. The bad news is that Trump trails Clinton in Oakland County 50 percent to 40 percent. Romney lost both counties in 2012, 51 percent to 47 percent in Macomb County and 53 percent to 45 percent in Oakland.

"He needs a good turnout from Kent County and Ottawa County, which are traditional Republican strongholds," Michigan Republican Party Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel said. "Macomb County is a huge battleground area in the sense that that's where those Reagan Democrats are from."

The Clinton campaign, meanwhile, is working to hold its strongholds and make inroads into Republican areas.

Despite not spending on ads, the Clinton campaign has set up its headquarters in Detroit and has seven other field offices around the state, including Grand Rapids (a Western Michigan city that Sen. Tim Kaine, Clinton's running mate, visited earlier this month). It eventually aims to have more than 26 offices statewide, with volunteers working on voter registration, including in Republican-controlled counties. By comparison, Trump currently has five offices around the state, with the oldest one in Grand Rapids.

The goal, according to Clinton allies, is to stay competitive in the conservative parts of the state and sweep to a win in strongholds like Kent or Ottawa County.

"I think it's an uphill battle in Western Michigan, but I think there's a major effort that's being undertaken there," Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) said in an interview with POLITICO.

Still, state Republicans say it’s not too late for Trump to recover, saying his current deficit reflects a summer steeped in missteps, including his feud with the Gold Star Khan family, an immigrant couple who, after their son was killed in active duty in Iraq in 2004, appeared at the Democratic National Convention to criticize Trump. Trump’s broader stance on Islam and Muslim immigrants has also hurt him in places such as Dearborn, a city with one of the largest percentages of Arab-Americans in the country, according to the chief of staff for one of the state's top Republican officials.

State Republicans say Trump needs to avoid those controversies and refocus on attacking Clinton — on her trustworthiness, on her foreign policy struggles, on her party’s stewardship of a national economy that hasn’t delivered for many working-class citizens.

"One, I think that Hillary Clinton's enjoying a bit of a bounce from the convention. Two, [Trump] didn't have such a great PR week," Kent County GOP Chairman John Inhulsen said when asked why the real estate mogul is lagging behind Clinton.

And if Trump does that, they hope, he can erase his summer struggles and come roaring back in the election’s home stretch.

"Trump had a bad week, a bad nine days, whatever it was. I expect you're going to see fluctuation in the polls between now and Election Day," said former Rep. Pete Hoekstra, a Trump supporter. "I don't expect much to happen this month. In Michigan, people don't usually pay attention to the election until after Labor Day."