Just how close do we think Kildee’s district was in MI in the POTUS race?
Shilly won Genesee by about 18.5K, the other full counties in the district, Bay, Arenec, Iosco seem to cut it to about 5 K, there are also part of Saginaw and little of Tuscola County. Trump won Saginaw County by a hair but the district has the city itself so I’m guessing more rat votes there.
The MI-05 only includes overwhelmingly RAT portions of Saginaw County (Saginaw city, Buena Vista township, etc.), and even with Trump winning blue-collar areas there is no way that Hillary didn’t carry that portion of the county. In any event, it looks like Hillary only carried the CD by like 50%-47% or something like that, which is an amazing performance for Trump in such a heavily RAT district.
As I’ve said many times, the heavily RAT parts of the MI-05 should be combined with Lasing and East Lansing (through a land bridge in Shiawassee County) in order to make surrounding CDs more Republican. I hope that the GOP Legislature finally does that after the 2020 Census, which also would allow it to reduce the number of RAT CDs in the Detroit metro area from 4 to 3 (since the MI-08 would be able to absorb lightly Dem and marginal precincts in Oakland and Wayne after being rid of the Lansings).