Journalism students at Michigan State University are taking a unique approach to covering the race for Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat, profiling places to understand the people in them.
The American Communities Project categorizes each county into one of 15 types of community based on the demographic and economic makeups.
The project is housed at Michigan State University, and its director, Dante Chinni, leads an independent study for journalism students.
This semester, four students fanned out to counties across Michigan that Chinni says will be key to understanding the midterms.
The communities students visited spanned Grand Traverse County in Northwest Michigan to Wayne County in the Southeast corner of the state. Students also visited Ottawa County and Ingham County.
They counties are classified as rural middle America, college town, big city and exurb by the American Communities Project.
Chinni said trying to group voters by demographics alone turns them into abstractions. To really understand someone, you have to understand their surroundings.
“People believe the things they believe or see the world the way they do because they come from a certain kind of place and a certain kind of economy, have certain kinds of friends, and certain kinds of occupations, and that leads them to see the world in a certain kind of way,” Chinni said. “Going to the place and seeing them in that place and understanding that place, I think, gives a much fuller picture of who that voter is.”
Chinni said both Democratic and Republican voters throughout the state appear to be treating the midterms as a referendum on President Donald Trump.
He said he was struck by the fact that voters in every county the students visited mentioned affordability.
“Wayne County, Ingham County, Ottawa County and Grand Traverse County are very different communities,” Chinni said. “They're different types of community in the work we do with the American Communities Project. They're also just very different kinds of places.
“And when you see one issue kind of breaking through everywhere like that, that tells you you've got you've got something dominant that's on voters' minds everywhere.”
