LANSING, Mich. — A change to voting districts this year could shift Michigan politics in a huge way.
Created back in 2018, the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission had a singular goal to reduce gerrymandering by making sure the State House and Senate represented the statewide vote.
"If Democrats got more than half of the statewide vote, they should get more than half of the State Senate and the State House," says Doug Koopman, a professor of political science at Calvin University. "And if it happened to Republicans, the other thing would happen."
The commission found that Democrat voters made up a majority of the statewide vote. But in contrast, the last time Democrats held the senate majority was in 1984.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer said during Tuesday night's debate that she thinks this election, the first with newly drawn districts, will lead to a more "reasonable legislature".
"I'm hopeful that we will actually get legislators who are representative of the people they serve," Whitmer continued.
And just a single seat makes a huge difference. In Washington, Koopman says you really need 60% of Senate votes to get things done. At the state level, however, even a small majority rules.
"A State Senate that has a one-seat or two-seat partisan advantage for one or the other, they do control the body," says Koopman.
Koopman says the Senate making that swing for the first time in almost 40 years is a real possibility, but says it's hard to project until the votes start coming in.
"It really does depend on the mood of the voters on that day, there's still a lot of Election Day voting," he says. "Not everybody votes absentee or votes early."
Not only have the Democrats not held a senate majority since they 80s, they also haven't held the House majority since 2010.
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