Michigan

...Negroes may have more power and influence in the Michigan Democratic party than in any other major political organization in the United States...

...The Detroit News poll, generally weighted against Democrats, predicts that Diggs will poll 96 per cent of the vote in his district and Williams 93 per cent...

...Almost no one questions the fact that the 1956 Stevenson has cut very heavily into Eisenhower's 1952 margin...

...the Republican Gubernatorial candidate, and his campaign managers, no one in the state seriously believes there is much of a chance that Williams will be defeated...

...As a symbol of the "big business" nature of the Eisenhower Administration, the name of Defense Secretary C. E. Wilson (of "bird and kennel dog" fame) has more meaning in Michigan than elsewhere...

...Presidential assistant Howard Pyle, too, gave the Democratic campaign quite an assist by choosing Detroit as the place to do some public philosophizing about unemployment as "one of the joys" of a "free economy.' Though the civil-rights issue may be giving Democrats some headaches in other areas, this does not seem to be true in Michigan...

...The question is: Has Eisenhower's popularity dropped enough to warrant a prediction that Stevenson will carry the state...

...Michigan, long a Republican stronghold, is now a swing state...

...Stevenson's vote, the News predicts, will run about 87 per cent in the areas of Negro concentration...

...It put the Presidential candidates back on the same ballot with the state nominees...

...Consequently, the national Democratic ticket's effect on local elections was minimized...

...It is widely believed now that the Republican legislature's strategy may backfire...

...Charles Diggs, Congressman in the 13th District, was the Chairman of the 1956 Democratic State Convention...

...Between the years 1940 and 1950, Detroit's Negro population rose from 150,000 to 303,000...

...Governor G. Mennen Williams's popularity in Michigan is so overwhelming that he is regarded as likely to pull thousands of voters into the Stevenson column...

...No doubt many Eisenhower voters will also use the single ballot to cast a straight Republican vote and thus draw from U'illiams some votes that might normally go to him, rather than to his Republican opponent, Albert Cobo...

...Probably the key to the outcome in Michigan will be found here...

...Thereafter, in Michigan in Presidential election years, it was not possible to cast a single straight party ballot...

...MICHIGAN Stevenson hopes rest on size of majority for Williams By Brendan Sexton United Automobile Workers Detroit After Frank Murphy swept into the Michigan Governor's mansion in the Roosevelt landslide of 1936...

...Aside from Albert Cobo...

...It is now estimated to be 360,000...

...Yet, the Republican-controlled legislature on five separate occasions refused to yield to the Governor's request that unemployment compensation be increased and its duration extended...

...In the same election, Williams was re-elected to a third term while Blair Moody only very narrowly missed election to the Senate...

...In this way, Republicans may have endeared themselves to the state's employers, but hardly to the state's workers, who vote in somewhat larger numbers...

...Michigan Democrats in the State Legislature voted unanimously (on several occasions) for FEPC, while the Republicans almost, though not quite, unanimously opposed the bill...

...It will always mean that the vote will be Democratic and that the speaker is a member of the UAW...

...Eisenhower polled 55.4 per cent of the state's vote in 1952...

...Democrats, though unable to re-elect Frank Murphy even to a second term in 1938, this year will seek to reelect G. Mennen Williams to his fifth term as Governor...

...Unemployment in the state has been pegged at about 250,-000 for many months...

...President Eisenhower has not yet appeared in the state, though he is expected to do so at some time later in the campaign...

...This year, therefore, it will be possible to cast a straight Democratic (or Republican) vote on a single ballot, making a single mark...

...That Williams will be elected and that the Democrats will increase the number of Congressional seats they now hold by at least one (perhaps as many as three) is virtually certain...

...The alliance between Negro voters and the Democratic party seems unshakable...

...Seeking to capitalize on President Eisenhower's personal popularity, the Republican State Legislature last year reversed its field...

...In Michigan, more than in most industrial states, the economic issues are important...

...the Republican State Legislature separated the Presidential and state ballots...

...Most political observers agree, however, that the Democrats are more likely to benefit from the new Michigan law than are the Republicans...

...Vice President Nixon and Senator William Know-land have toured out-state Michigan but have carefully avoided speaking in the areas where UAW strength is heavily concentrated...

...If UAW members and other labor people who cast bipartisan votes for Eisenhower and Williams in the 1952 election, but who voted "straight" in 1954 and helped roll up William's state majority of 250.000, stick to the straight Democratic ballot this year, Stevenson will carry the state...

...Nine Negroes hold seats as Democrats in the State Legislature, probably the largest such group in any state...

...In Michigan, according to the New York Times, "It is not unusual to get the answer, 'I am a union member,' in response to a request for Presidential preference...