The general election is just six months away. The polls show that Joe biden is leading Donald Trump nationally. However, polling and election analysis website fivethirtyeight wondered “when should voters start looking at the polls?” Wochit
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Polls suggest President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign is in deep trouble in Michigan, as it appears to be across a handful of key states he won in 2016, with women increasingly rejecting him and previous levels of support among older voters and voters without college degrees lagging.
Nationally, Joe Biden, the former vice president and presumptive Democratic nominee, has an 8-percentage-point lead on Trump on average in the polls, according to RealClearPolitics.com, a website that does election analysis. And after a brief surge nationally in late March/early April, Trump’s job approval ratings have fallen, with an average of 55% of Americans disapproving of Trump’s presidency in the wake of the president’s threats to impose military order on civilian protests over police killings of blacks and the deaths and economic upheaval caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Only 42% approve.
It’s no better in Michigan, where a recent EPIC-MRA poll shows Biden leading Trump by 12 points and the RealClearPolitics average of polls showing Biden 7 points ahead in Michigan — more than any other state won by Trump four years ago. That only underscores the fact that some election handicappers think that Michigan, relative to most other battleground states he won, is less likely to back him again.
“The only poll that matters is the poll in November,” said Laura Cox, chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, referring to the Nov. 3 election, who added that the party’s internal polls have the race closer than the public polls. “The president and the RNC (Republican National Committee) are heavily invested in Michigan. … His pathway to victory is through Michigan.”
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That may be true. But Trump is heading into the summer at a marked disadvantage not only in Michigan but in spots across the nation. Consider:
- Along with Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are credited with narrowly electing Trump four years ago, marking the first time they backed a Republican presidential nominee as a bloc since 1984. But Trump’s polling average is lagging Biden’s in both Pennsylvania and Wisconsin at present, with him trailing Biden by more than 3 percentage points, having won each by less than eight-tenths of a percentage point in 2016. He can’t afford to lose all three.
- Even in states where Trump is considered a stronger candidate, he has struggled. In Florida, which he now calls his home and which he won in 2016 by about 1 point, Biden has a 3.4-point average edge in the polls. Meanwhile, in Ohio — which Trump won by 8 points four years ago — polls show Biden up by 1%. They even show Biden trailing by only 2 points in Texas, which Trump won by 9 points in 2016.
- Recent polls have also shown two-thirds of people surveyed nationally — including about the same percentage of independent voters, who often swing election outcomes in tight races — feel the country is headed in the wrong direction. Eight out of every 10 independents polled in Michigan agreed with that sentiment in the EPIC-MRA poll. “Our pandemic was not managed well and I think he’s paying a big price for that,” said Rachel Bitecofer, an elections forecaster at the Niskanen Center, a research organization in Washington.
- Women voters, who make up the largest share of voters, are increasingly rejecting the president. An analysis of May and June polls of registered voters by the New York Times’ Nate Cohn showed Biden leading Trump 59%-35% among women nationally, worse than the 51%-37% spread seen in 2016 polls. That has also been the case in other states, including Michigan, where support for Biden, according to the EPIC-MRA poll, went from 57%-37% in Biden’s favor in January to 60%-34% in June. And while Trump still leads among men, it’s by a much smaller, single-digit margin both nationally (49%-43%) and in the state (49%-45% in the EPIC-MRA poll).
- Trump’s also lagging with older voters, who supported him in 2016, trailing Biden by 7 points nationally among those 65 or older, according to Cohn’s analysis. In EPIC-MRA’s poll, Biden had a 57%-39% lead over Trump among that group. Biden also had a narrow 48%-47% lead among voters who are not college graduates in Michigan, a group Trump won 49%-45% in 2016, according to exit polls.
But don’t expect Trump or the Republicans to give up on Michigan any time soon.
Despite polls that indicate Trump is lagging across the map in key state, including Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida and even in Arizona and Ohio, two states he won relatively easily four years ago, there is no indication that he is looking to abandon Michigan and move resources elsewhere, at least not as of now.
Trump has pushed back against several polls, questioning their methodology and calling them fake. He also has taken refuge in the fact that most projections showed him losing to Hillary Clinton, including in battleground states such as Michigan, four years ago.
But the recent wave of polling isn’t fake: Taken together, it’s indicative of a trend, one so potentially disruptive to Trump’s reelection campaign that, if it continues, will almost certainly lead to tough choices down the road about where to best spend his money, time and other resources.
That’s not to say Trump can’t come back: In mid-June 2016, Clinton had an eight-point 46%-38% lead in the poll average over Trump in Michigan. And analysts have noted that if the race narrows nationally, as it would be expected to as the election approaches, it will likely bring several of the states where Trump looks to be in trouble more clearly into his column again. There are also questions about whether some Republicans and Republican-leaning independents feel less comfortable acknowledging support for Trump right now, even though they are still likely to support the president, potentially affecting their accuracy.
The recent trend line, though, is so broadly bad for Trump that even accounting for what many observers saw as glaring errors in polling in 2016 that failed to predict Trump’s victory, he is in trouble.
The Free Press calculated the difference between the RealClearPolitics.com polling average going into the 2016 election and the outcome in 11 potential battleground states, including Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Texas, then subtracted that difference from the current polling averages in those states. It shows Biden ahead, even by that measure, in seven of them, including Texas and Arizona.
Of all the battleground states Trump flipped in 2016, however, Michigan looks to be the farthest out of reach at this moment, with Biden leading by 3.5% even accounting for the difference between the polls and the result in 2016.
More: Joe Biden has doubled his lead over Donald Trump in Michigan, poll says
The president does have some news going in his favor. Last week, he touted a report that showed the economy added 2.5 million jobs in May, though unemployment remains high and there were questions about the report’s accuracy. Republicans also have been using calls by some Democrats to cut police funding against them as a way to try to bring back voters, even as polls indicate, at this turbulent moment, Americans, by a wide margin, trust the Black Lives Matter movement more than they do the president.
This week, Trump’s campaign announced he will resume rallies beginning Friday, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a state he won by 36% four years ago. He’ll follow that up with rallies in North Carolina, Arizona, Texas and Florida.
But Trump appears to have a lot of ground to make up, including in a lot of states he can’t afford to lose.
For now, Michigan’s battleground status secure
Despite losing the popular vote by about 3 million votes, Trump won the Electoral College vote four years ago 304-227 because of the built-in advantage Republicans have in many smaller states that have proportionately more weight in the Electoral College than their overall population suggests they might.
Trump’s flip of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania gave him 46 of those electoral votes — which equal a state’s number of U.S. representatives and senators — meaning that had they, as projected, gone for Clinton, Trump wouldn’t have gotten the 270 electoral votes needed to win.
As such, winning them again seems crucial.
But all other things being equal to 2016, Trump doesn’t have to win them all again to win reelection. He just has to avoid dropping below 270. If he wins Michigan’s 16 electoral votes, for instance, but loses Pennsylvania’s 20 and Wisconsin’s 10, he still wins, with 274 electoral votes. If he loses Michigan and Wisconsin and wins Pennsylvania, he still wins reelection with 278 electoral votes.
Basically, all other things being equal, Democrats need to win Michigan and Pennsylvania to keep him under 270.
That argues that if the president later in the campaign season needs to focus resources elsewhere, one of those states might be less contested. And right now, based on the public polling, that would be Michigan. Some election handicapping sites, including Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, already have Michigan not as a tossup, but leaning Democratic.
“If you were to see the Republicans pull out of a state and retrench elsewhere, Michigan is the likeliest candidate,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor for Sabato’s Crystal Ball. “Michigan was (always) going to be the hardest for him to keep.”
Part of that is because the state has typically trended more Democratic in statewide federal elections, those for president and U.S. senators, than those others. Michigan, for instance, hasn’t elected a Republican U.S. senator since 1994. Wisconsin and Pennsylvania both have one now. That’s also part of the reason that in both 2008 and 2012, Republican nominees for president — including Mitt Romney, who was born in Michigan — moved resources elsewhere ahead of the election when they struggled to catch up with Barack Obama.
And while Trump managed to eke out a win over Clinton with two-tenths of 1% of the vote in 2016, or less than 11,000 votes — as some 75,000 Michiganders went to the polls but didn’t cast a vote for any candidate — the polls as well as Democratic gains in 2018 suggest strongly the state has swung back toward that party.
“We’ll still be on the swing state list but it certainly looks like we’re on the Democratic side compared to Wisconsin and Pennsylvania,” said Matt Grossmann, director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University.
Trump, however, would have a difficult time abandoning Michigan. His political persona is wrapped up with voicing what he sees as the grievances of blue-collar voters and the failure of Democrats to address them. He talks up American manufacturing and making automakers keep jobs in the U.S. Giving up on the state would undercut all of that.
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Michigan also remains his signature win from 2016. His RNC chairman, Ronna McDaniel, is from the state, and he closed out his successful 2016 campaign with events in Sterling Heights and Grand Rapids, a point he rarely forgets to invoke when visiting Michigan. As recently as last month he was in the state, visiting a Ford plant in Ypsilanti, and promising he’d be back soon.
“I see no circumstances under which we walk away from Michigan,” said Chris Gustafson, who serves as spokesman for the Trump campaign in the state.
Democrats promise there won’t be a repeat of ’16
If Trump is unlikely to give up on Michigan, the same has to be said for Biden and the Democrats, given the widespread criticism of Clinton’s performance in the state in 2016. In that election, calls from Democratic operatives to her campaign headquarters in Brooklyn to shore up her presence in the state went unheeded, and Trump won.
Democratic officials insist there won’t be a repeat, no matter what the polls say.
“We all know what happens if you believe before you know,” said Lavora Barnes, chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party. “Everybody who stayed home believing (Clinton) had it in the bag is going to make sure we’re not repeating 2016. … I’m not concerned that there is a decision to pull resources from Michigan.”
Jill Alper, a Michigan political consultant who has worked for Clinton and others, also said while there is no doubt that Trump’s numbers are down significantly, they could rebound, and Michigan is a state that needs to be — and will remain — a battleground.
“Depending when you look at it, we’re a 50.2%, 50.4% Democratic (leaning) state,” she said. “You have to work really hard to get your percentage of the persuadable (voters). … There are many months still until the election and you never know what’s around the corner.”
“The vice president certainly has the wind at his back,” she added, “but that’s today.”
If anything, Michigan may be more important to the Democrats than the Republicans, given its political lean. Just as lagging support in say, Arizona or North Carolina, points to likely trouble for a Republican candidate nationwide, lagging support in Michigan for a Democrat can point to problems for that party.
Priorities USA, a Washington, D.C., organization that supports Democrats through a political action committee, Priorities USA Action, said last week it intends to keep Michigan among a group of battleground states where it focuses its money and efforts, a group that also includes Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona and North Carolina.
Guy Cecil, Priorities USA’s chairman, said even the organization’s own polling suggests a somewhat tighter race than some recent public polls, with Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania all within about a percentage point of each other and each showing Biden with a “5- to 6-point lead.”
“If you look at the 10 closest states, they all move around except one,” he said, adding that one is Florida, which tends to be split equally on the election.
Julia Krieger, a spokeswoman for the Biden campaign, said the vice president’s campaign “will keep broadening our strong base of support” and expects to make announcements about additional staffing and efforts in Michigan in coming weeks. Trump’s team, too, said it will continue to bring resources and people to Michigan as the election draws closer. Don’t be surprised if the president returns in the relatively near future, either, though no immediate plans to do so have been announced.
That said, no candidate’s time, or his or her money or resources, are limitless. If Michigan continues to trend increasingly toward Biden, rather than turning back toward being more in the president’s favor, it could lead to some hard decisions come fall.
Contact Todd Spangler: tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @tsspangler. Read more on Michigan politics and sign up for our elections newsletter.
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