'There’s something happening': MI Dem says her 'very conservative' county 'feels different'

The 2024 electoral vote count will likely come down to whoever wins the three so-called "Blue Wall" states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And one Michigan voter says she's experiencing some unusual behavior in her swing county.

The Daily Beast's Michael Daly recently spoke with Leelanau County, Michigan resident Willow Al-Shamma, a Democratic voter who lives in the rural Northern Michigan county with her husband. who is also a Democrat. She said despite living in a "very conservative" area, she's seen a noticeable warmth toward the Democratic ticket that "feels different" from previous elections.

While former President Donald Trump won Leelanau County in 2016 by four percentage points, President Joe Biden narrowly swung it in his favor by less than 1,000 votes in 2020. If Vice President Kamala Harris hopes to win the Mitten State, she'll likely need to cut into Trump's lead in rural areas many miles away from major metropolitan areas like Detroit and Grand Rapids. Al-Shamma told Daly that she's seeing direct evidence of that happening on the ground.

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Al-Shamma recalled one instance of running into a woman at a gas station in her "tiny village" of roughly 71 residents who had previously decked out her house with pro-Trump and MAGA paraphernalia. She told the Beast that while the woman no longer displayed Trump campaign merch, she was unsure how the woman would react to her camouflage-themed Harris-Walz hat.

"She saw my hat and she gave me a thumbs up and I was pretty shocked,” Al-Shamma said. “I pointed to Harris-Walz and she nodded her head and I almost immediately got teary.”

Now, al-Shamma runs the Grand Traverse County Democratic Party's official TikTok account, where she's lately been posting her get-out-the-vote efforts in the must-win battleground state. In a recent post, she opined that her county may very well break for Harris given the strong commitment she's seen from other women voters.

"Guys, there’s something happening,” she said. “I think that the women of Michigan know that we need to protect our basic reproductive health and rights for us and our daughters and their daughters. And I think we’re gonna see that in the poll results, in the voting results here in Michigan.”

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Michigan is one of the largest prizes of election night, with 16 electoral votes being awarded to the eventual winner. Biden won the state by roughly 100,000 total votes in 2020, though Harris may have more difficulty keeping the Mitten State in Democratic hands given anger from the sizable population of Muslim voters.

Ever since the aftermath of Hamas' October 7, 2023 attack that killed 1200 Israelis (and Israel's disproportionate response that has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians to date), Michigan's Arab American population has been angry with the Biden administration's handling of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza brought on by relentless Israeli attacks. In the Mitten State's March primary, more than 101,000 Michiganders voted "uncommitted" to register their disapproval of Biden's Middle East policy.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan), the first Palestinian American elected to Congress, endorsed the uncommitted movement earlier this year. Even though she's encouraging her constituents to vote straight Democrat on their ballots (which includes the presidency), Tlaib has notably not endorsed Harris directly.

Click here to read the Beast's report in full (subscription required).

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