The Associated Press declared victory for Donald Trump early Wednesday morning, showing 277 votes in the electoral college compared to 224 votes for Kamala Harris. But Leelanau County continued its trend of voting blue both locally and nationally.
According to the unofficial election results linked on the county website, Harris received about 53% of 15,863 total votes, or 8,407 votes, in Leelanau County. This continues the trend of voters here choosing the Democrat candidate for president, starting with Barack Obama and continuing with Joe Biden.
Moreover, six of seven Leelanau County districts elected Democrat commissioners. The District no. 1 commissioner position has been empty since its commissioner resigned in July, but voters in Elmwood Township and a portion of Traverse City chose another Democrat to replace her.
District nos. 2 and 3, which include Bingham and Suttons Bay townships, switched from red to blue.
Leelanau Democrats co-chairs Barb Conley, Brigid Hart, and Dr. Robert LaPorte reflected on their party’s local victories but decisive defeat in the presidential election. All three of the party leaders thanked local volunteers and candidates for their hard work this election cycle. “It’s going to be a challenge,” LaPorte said. “Luckily, we have our new board of commissioners. We’re going to be working on the same programs and projects that we currently are doing. We’re going to need everybody to pause a bit and realize … we should treat each other, our neighbors, how we want to be treated. It’s going to be a challenge, but that’s probably part of life.”
“I’m disappointed in the (presidential election) results, to say the least, but we’ll see how it turns out,” Hart agreed.
Reflected on the campaigns, Hart noted that “the Republicans, at least nationally and some locally, had very negative messages and felt compelled to pick on people,” while the Democrats were more positive and uplifting in her opinion.
For her part, Leelanau County Republican Party Chairwoman Laura Tarsa said that the local Republicans are pleased with the results of the presidential election and encouraged by the high voter turnout in the county.
“We were all thrilled Trump got his win,” Tarsa said. “Locally, I’m glad we had a high voter turnout. I’m glad we got people engaged in politics, as that was the goal. The results were bluer than I hoped for, but we’ll see how things work out going forward.”
Indeed, the voter turnout was very high in this election, even by Leelanau County’s standards. Leelanau often had the highest turnout in the state, and it was even higher this year. In 2020, voter turnout was 79.4%. According to the unofficial election results, 16,253 ballots were cast out of a total of 20,094 registered voters in the county.
The Michigan Secretary of State shows a slightly higher number of registered voters in Leelanau County at 22,158.
County Clerk Michelle Crocker said the higher voter turnout could be attributed to the introduction of early in-person voting for nine days prior to Election Day. After the nine-day early in-person voting period concluded Sunday, Crocker noted that 58.2% of voters had already cast their ballots.
These included 3,156 early inperson votes in Leelanau County plus an additional 8,385 out of 9,546 requested absentee voter ballots that had been delivered by Monday. According to Crocker, roughly 300-400 people visited the government center to vote early on each day of early voting, from Oct. 26 to Nov. 3.
“I’m very pleased. I didn’t expect 14.2% of our voters to show up for early voting, which I think is very impressive,” Crocker said Monday.
