What Midwest Primary Results May Portend for Fall Midterms and Beyond

In the last few weeks, Democratic primary voters in two “purple” states around the Great Lakes went to the polls to choose between left-leaning and centrist candidates with different outcomes.

In the Michigan Primary for U.S. Senate, the more left-leaning candidate Abdul El-Sayed narrowly defeated the more centrist U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens. A week later, in the Wisconsin Primary for Governor, centrist candidate David Crowley eked out a win over leftist candidate Francesca Hong.

While the races differed in many ways (from the strengths and weaknesses of the various candidates to the size of the two fields), some intraparty differences became clear in two American Communities Project community types: Big Cities and College Towns.

In both races, Big Cities seemed to represent the Democrats’ more moderate arm, while College Towns represented more of the leftward lean. Those community types will be interesting to watch in this fall’s midterm elections, but they could be particularly important in 2028 as the Democrats choose their presidential nominee.

The College Towns

Michigan is home to seven College Town communities, and El-Sayed won six of them by double-digit margins. Wisconsin is home to five College Towns, and Hong won all of them by seven points or more. In races that wound up being razor-close, those numbers show a clear and solid lean toward the more progressive candidate.

El-Sayed’s big win in six of Michigan’s seven College Town communities (Houghton, Ingham, Isabella, Kalamazoo, Marquette, and Washtenaw) arguably propelled him to victory. He wound up winning the state by about 15,000 votes and carried the College Towns by almost 50,000 votes.

Hong’s margin in the College Towns was tighter. She only carried Wisconsin’s five College Town counties (Dane, Dunn, Eau Claire, La Crosse, and Portage) by about 17,000 votes. The College Towns kept her in the game in a close race, but in the end, she lost by about 4,000 votes. If she could have squeezed a little more out of those counties, she could have won.

Not all College Towns are the same, of course. Michigan and Wisconsin are home to three massive Big Ten communities and assorted smaller ones. But generally speaking, all those communities tend to be younger and better educated than the state’s general population.

If there is a message in the primary votes, it seems to be that these communities are full of voters who want something different from the status quo and who seem to be willing to go to the polls and vote for it. Or that is at least true in primaries — what it means in general elections will more easily be determined in this fall’s midterms.

The Big Cities

Michigan and Wisconsin are each home to only one Big City community. (In Michigan, Wayne County is home to Detroit. In Wisconsin, Milwaukee County is home to that city.) They are slightly different places. Wayne holds a lot more people (1.7 million versus 924,000 for Milwaukee) and has a much bigger Black population. Milwaukee has a greater percentage of Hispanic residents and a higher percentage of four-year college graduates. Milwaukee also comes with an important caveat: Crowley was the county executive and had an obvious home-field advantage.

Some of those differences may account for the differences in the final vote tallies from the two counties. Milwaukee was much closer than Wayne, even though both of the Big Cities voted for the more moderate candidate in their respective elections.

Black voters, a pillar of the Democratic base and 37% of the population in Wayne, tend to be more socially conservative than other Democrats. Remember how the Black voters in South Carolina were instrumental to Joe Biden winning the Democratic nomination in 2020. Meanwhile, Hispanic voters, who are more plentiful in Milwaukee, tend to be younger, and younger Democrats tend to lean further left politically.

Still, in both races, the Big City counties sided with the more moderate candidate, suggesting there is less appetite for a turn leftward in those places.

Why It Matters

There are three largely urban ACP community types that are the cornerstone of the Democratic electorate — Big Cities, College Towns, and Urban Suburbs. They have voted Democratic in every presidential race since 2008, and together they hold about 180 million people. But their populations are not similar, with different defining characteristics for each.

The Big Cities are densely populated places full of diversity, in terms of race and ethnicity, income, and educational attainment. The Urban Suburbs make up the wealthiest and best educated community type in the ACP, with lots of young couples and families. The College Towns are full of young people who pass through those communities, and the institutions and people who serve them.

Those are voter groups with different identities almost by definition. Add in the rural Black Democratic vote of the African American South, and the picture becomes more complicated.

If the Big Cities lean toward a more conservative, mainstream Democratic candidate, and the College Towns side with a more left-leaning alternative, the 2028 primary fights in some states, including Michigan (which looks as though it will come early on the calendar) and Wisconsin, could intensify and say a lot about the party going forward.

The Democratic presidential field is wide open for 2028 with no clear front-runner, and those community types are likely to have different ideas about who they want to see at the top of the ticket. The results from Michigan and Wisconsin make that even more clear.