Vice President Kamala Harris failed to match Democrat’s levels of support on Michigan State University’s campus compared to the 2020 and 2022 elections, according to an independent data analysis from The State News. This trend is in line with the consensus that the vice president underperformed nationally compared to Joe Biden in 2020.
Harris obtained 74.52% of votes in East Lansing precincts 1, 12, 13, 14 and 15, which make up MSU’s campus, according to data from Ingham County. That level of support is over 3 percentage points short of President Joe Biden’s 78.19% of earned votes on campus.
Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, many MSU students were not living on campus during the 2020 election. The total number of votes cast on campus in 2020 was 949, less than a third of the 3,092 votes cast in the 2024 election.
Although the 2020 election may not be the strongest indicator of the campus’ voting patterns, Harris also failed to match Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s levels of support in the 2022 midterm election — which was held on a post-pandemic, fully populated campus.
Whitmer received 86.33% of the campus vote in 2022, more than 11 percentage points greater than Harris’ 2024 performance. The midterm election — which was the first election after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision and contained a ballot proposal to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution — resulted in the highest youth voter turnout in the nation.
While voter turnout on campus was only 1,889 in 2022, Whitmer’s dominance on campus ultimately contributed to her defeat of Republican Tudor Dixon by over 10 percentage points.
For whatever reason, Harris failed to inherit Biden and Whitmer’s successes on campus. That outcome, as of 2:18 a.m. on Nov. 6, has contributed to her deficit in Michigan.
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