Michigan 2018 Election Results

Michigan held its general election on November 6, 2018, deciding 148 legislative seats and 4 statewide offices led by the governorship. No chamber changed party control.

Highlights

• Democrats broke the Republican trifecta by sweeping every statewide office on the ballot, but Republicans kept both legislative chambers on significantly shrunken majorities, leaving Michigan with divided government.
• Former Senate Democratic leader Gretchen Whitmer (D) beat Attorney General Bill Schuette (R) by nearly 10 points for governor, with Garlin Gilchrist II (D) as her running mate. Down the ticket, Jocelyn Benson (D) won the secretary of state's office by about 9 points, ending a nearly 30-year drought for Democrats there, and Dana Nessel (D) edged House Speaker Tom Leonard (R) by under 3 points for attorney general, an office Republicans had held for 16 years.
• Democrats' legislative gains ran through the suburbs of Oakland and Wayne counties and cost Senate Republicans their two-thirds supermajority: the GOP caucus fell from 27 seats to 22, below the 26 needed.
  • Sens. Margaret O'Brien (R) and Marty Knollenberg (R) lost their seats to Sean McCann (D) in Senate 20 and Mallory McMorrow (D) in Senate 13. Dayna Polehanki (D) beat state Rep. Laura Cox (R) in Senate 7, and Rosemary Bayer (D) won Senate 12 by fewer than 1,000 votes over state Rep. Mike McCready (R).
  • In the House, where Republicans' edge shrank from 63 seats to 58, Rep. Jeff Noble (R) was knocked off by teacher Matt Koleszar (D) in House 20, and Laurie Pohutsky (D) took House 19 by about 220 votes.
• A Bridge Magazine analysis found Democrats won over half the votes cast in House and Senate races yet remained in the minority, largely because of districts drawn in 2001 and refined in 2011 to Republican advantage. The same voters approved Proposal 2, moving mapmaking to an independent citizens commission. Its first districts were used in 2022, and Bridge later wrote that Democrats' legislative win that year began with the 2018 vote.
• Democrats won all but one of the 12 legislative seats that changed hands; the exception was House 110, where Greg Markkanen (R) beat Ken Summers (D). All 3 defeated incumbents were Republicans, and both major parties contested every legislative seat. The 2 other races decided by under 2 points were both Republican holds: Rep. Larry Inman (R) survived in House 104 by about 350 votes, and Rep. Kathy Crawford (R) held House 38 by about 590.
• Voters approved all three proposals on the ballot: Proposal 1 legalized recreational marijuana, Proposal 3 wrote voting policies such as no-reason absentee voting into the state constitution, and Proposal 2 was the redistricting overhaul described above.

Legislature

• House (110 seats): 46 D, 63 R, 1 other or vacant before the election, 51 D, 58 R, 1 other or vacant after; control stayed with Republicans.
• Senate (38 seats): 10 D, 27 R, 1 other or vacant before the election, 16 D, 22 R after; control stayed with Republicans.

Statewide races

Legislative races

Ballot measures