Michigan swings the election.

Voters in November will choose the next president of the United States, with the end result expected to be either a second term for President Joe Biden or a return to the White House for former President Donald Trump. Every vote matters, but the electoral results in a handful of key swing states will play major roles in determining the ultimate outcome.

What exactly is a swing state? There’s a literal by-the-book – or dictionary – definition: “A U.S. state in which Republican and Democratic candidates have similar levels of support and which is considered to play a key role in the outcome of presidential elections.”

Yet there are still nuances at play, and though the group of swing states each presidential cycle is often similar, variations can occur due to factors like changing demographics, voter turnout and other circumstances. Georgia, for example, is now a swing state on the heels of Biden's win there in 2020, in large part due to the support of Black voters. He was the first Democratic presidential candidate to take Georgia in almost three decades.

For its part, Michigan had been a reliably blue Midwestern state in recent decades after voting exclusively Republican in the 1970s and 1980s. But similar to Wisconsin, it became a major battleground after Trump won there by less than 11,000 votes in 2016. Biden notched a victory there over Trump in 2020, though by a wider margin.

Biden including Michigan on his post-State of the Union barnstorming slate in early March highlights its importance in the 2024 contest, while Trump held a rally there in February ahead of the state’s GOP primary and returned with a stop in Grand Rapids on April 2 to deliver remarks focused on the southern border.

The Great Lakes State, which was No. 42 in the most recent Best States rankings from U.S. News, holds 15 electoral votes, placing it in the top 10 among all U.S. states and also pointing to the crucial role it could play in the race for the White House.

Here’s everything you need to know about Michigan as a 2024 battleground.

Why Michigan Is Important in the Presidential Race

U.S. News in June handicapped [designated] Michigan as a “toss-up” in the 2024 presidential election, even though the Democratic candidate has prevailed in all but one contest there since 1992. The winner in Michigan also has gone on to win the White House in nine of the last 12 presidential elections.

Biden has focused on the state with recent trips as he seeks to hold tight to the “blue wall” of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that helped him defeat Trump four years ago. But Michigan, where the Biden reelection campaign planned to open more than 15 field offices, could prove to be more challenging for Biden to win again amid criticism of the administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war in places like Dearborn – a Detroit suburb with one of the nation’s highest concentrations of Arab Americans – and among younger voters. Biden won the Michigan Democratic primary in February but saw 13% of voters go with an “uncommitted” option. On May 19, the president traveled to Detroit to speak at an NAACP gala amid signs of shrinking Black voter support.

While Trump has had to focus on his various legal battles recently, he also has traveled to Michigan multiple times in recent months, including a September stop where he criticized Biden’s push for electric cars during remarks to auto workers near Detroit. And after his April 2 trip to Grand Rapids, Trump returned to Michigan with a visit to Freeland on May 1, where he derided the judge overseeing his hush money trial in New York as “crooked.”