Kent and Oakland counties — two areas that have been trending in favor of Democrats — could play pivotal roles in determining whether Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris or Republican former President Donald Trump wins Michigan, according to those entrenched in the race for the White House.

Backers of Harris contended that she’ll build on Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 margins of victory in Kent and Oakland counties in the Nov. 5 election, potentially disrupting Trump’s path to success statewide. However, supporters of Trump said he’ll be able to break the drift from the GOP in both counties by improving or holding steady his performance there from four years ago.“It’s the canary in the coal mine,” Michigan state Sen. Mark Huizenga, R-Walker, said of Kent County in a Thursday interview. “It’s the sentinel indicator.”

Harris, a former U.S. senator from California, is making three campaign stops in Michigan on Friday with 18 days remaining before Election Day. One of her events will be in Kent County, Michigan’s fourth most populous county. Another will be in Oakland County, Harris’ second campaign event this year in Michigan’s second most populous county.

Trump will also be in the state Friday. Among his functions will be a roundtable discussion in Oakland County. He’s previously visited Kent County three times this year, including holding his first campaign rally with his running mate, JD Vance, after the Republican National Convention in Grand Rapids on July 20.

Donald Trump addresses supporters on July 20 at Van Andel Arena in downtown Grand Rapids. The former president has made three campaign stops this year in Kent County, a crucial battleground in Michigan.

The key number across both Kent and Oakland counties could be 130,351 votes. That was Biden’s combined margin of victory in the two counties in 2020. Statewide, Biden won Michigan against Trump by 154,188 votes, 51%-48%.

Biden’s net advantage out of Kent and Oakland represented about 85% of his statewide margin.

If Harris beats Trump in Kent and Oakland by more than 130,351 votes on Nov. 5, it means Trump will have to find even more support from other places in Michigan, most of them less populated, than he did in 2020.

“It makes it much harder,” said Brandon Dillon, a former chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party from Kent County, of Trump’s chances statewide if he suffers bigger defeats in Kent and Oakland this fall.

The Republican former president’s path to win the state likely means holding on to the levels of vote he got in Kent and Oakland in 2020 — not underperforming them — and picking up support in other places, such as Macomb County, the state’s third most populous county where he prevailed twice before.

In 2016, when Trump narrowly won Michigan against Democrat Hillary Clinton, he became the first GOP presidential nominee to carry the state since 1988. His combined loss margin in Kent and Oakland was 44,370 votes, about a third of his margin of defeat from 2020.

‘Needs to be better’

Kent County was once a Republican Party stronghold. But the trend against the GOP has been clear there for more than a decade. The county has a history of political moderation dating back to Republican former President Gerald Ford, who represented the Grand Rapids area in Congress for nearly a quarter century.

“Because of that history of political moderation, there’s been a real rejection of the kind of politics Trump stands for,” said Dillon, who represented a portion of Kent County in the state House as a Democrat.

In 2012, Republican Mitt Romney won Kent County by 22,517 votes, 53%-46%, over Democratic President Barack Obama. In 2016, Trump beat Clinton there by 9,487 votes, 48%-45%. But in 2020, Biden defeated Trump by 22,174 votes, 52%-46%.

And there are multiple signs the trend in Democrats’ favor has continued since 2020.

Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris speaks about abortion rights on Feb. 22 at Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids. It was Harris’ only campaign trip so far this year to Kent County, Michigan’s fourth largest county that has been trending Democratic in recent election cycles.

Two years ago, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer won Kent County by 10 percentage points over Republican Tudor Dixon, 54%-44%, and Democrats swept four competitive state House races in Kent County.

But Republicans from Kent County said they’re still finding reason for optimism this November.

Huizenga, who won a key Kent County-based state Senate district in 2022, said he’s been seeing Trump yard signs in areas of Grand Rapids he wouldn’t expect to. Huizenga said he believes Trump will improve on his vote share in the county from 2020.

“I am not sure that Trump wins Kent, but I think it needs to be better than in the past,” Huizenga said.

Likewise, while state Rep. Bryan Posthumus, R-Rockford, acknowledged Trump has “challenges” in the Grand Rapids suburbs, the GOP lawmaker said the former president merely needs to maintain the vote haul he got in Kent County in 2020 to be successful statewide.

Posthumus said Trump will get more votes this year than he did in 2020 in Wayne County’s Downriver area, Macomb County and the Upper Peninsula.

“I am confident Trump is going to win Michigan,” Posthumus said. “Two weeks ago, I wasn’t quite as confident. But it seems the environment is starting to break his way a little bit.”

On Sunday, Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, and billionaire business mogul Mark Cuban are scheduled to campaign on behalf of the vice president in Grand Rapids.

‘Run up the score’

Both Kent and Oakland counties have higher median household incomes and percentages of residents with bachelor’s degrees than the state of Michigan, according to U.S. census data.

A poll of 600 likely Michigan voters, conducted Oct. 1-4 and commissioned The Detroit News and WDIV-TV (Channel 4), found Trump leading Harris among non-college-educated voters but trailing her among the college-educated.

In Oakland County, Trump lost to Clinton by 53,867 votes in 2016, 43%-51%. Four years later, in 2020, Trump lost the county by 108,177 votes, 42%-56%, a significant dropoff that damaged his statewide chances.

Likewise, in 2018, Democrats won a majority on the Oakland County Commission for the first time in a half-century.

Dave Woodward, the Democratic chairman of the commission, predicted that Harris would win Oakland County by 110,000 to 112,000 votes this time around, an improvement for Democrats from 2020. It’s a “realistic goal” to have Harris win Oakland County by 15 percentage points, he said.

“We’re going to run up the score in Oakland County,” Woodward said.

County voters haven’t been buying what Trump’s selling and support the investments Democrats have made in the future of the U.S. auto industry, which has a strong presence in Oakland, Woodward said.

However, when Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, visited Auburn Hills on Oct. 2, Oakland County Republican Party Chairman Vance Patrick guaranteed that the GOP would do better in the county than the party did four years ago.

“There’s been an overwhelming positive response,” Patrick said of the party’s efforts this fall.

Patrick said there are Trump yard signs in places like Beverly Hills and Birmingham where there haven’t before.

Trump is scheduled to participate in an event hosted by the nonprofit Building America’s Future in Oakland County on Friday evening. He was last in the county for a rally on Feb. 17.

Building America’s Future, a Washington, D.C.-based group that’s consistently promoted GOP candidates and causes, is bankrolling an ad campaign in Michigan that’s been telling Jewish voters Harris is “pandering to Palestine” while telling voters in communities with large populations of Arab and Muslim voters that Harris is “always supporting Israel.”