Harris, Trump was virtually tied in Michigan

A new poll of likely voters in Michigan by Suffolk University/USA Today found a tie between Republican former President Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in next Tuesday’s presidential election.

Michigan is one of the few swing states expected to determine the outcome of the election, along with Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Democratic President Joe Biden won Michigan in 2020 against Trump, who won the state in 2016.

The latest polls have shown the Michigan race to be a virtual battle between the two major party nominees.

The new poll showed Trump with a 47.4% to 47% lead over Harris, well within the survey’s margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points. In this survey of 500 Michiganders, the difference represents just two voters.

Green Party candidate Jill Stein and former Natural Justice Party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has withdrawn from the race but remains on the ballot, each received 1.4%, with independent Cornel West receiving 1% and libertarian Chase Oliver received 0.2%. Independent Joseph Kishore also got 0.2%.

Only 1.4% of respondents said they were unsure or refused to answer. Suffolk University interviewed people between last Thursday and Sunday.

In the race for Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat, the poll also showed Democratic U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Holly leading Republican former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers of White Lake 47.2% to 45.5%, also within the margin of error . Nearly 5% of respondents in that race were still undecided.

The poll results in the presidential race showed a large and nearly equal gap between voters of different genders, with women favoring Harris (57%-38%) and men favoring Trump (57%-37%) . White voters split 53%-43% for the Republican former president and black voters split 82%-15% for the Democratic vice president, who, if elected, would be the first woman, the first black woman and the first South woman -Asian descent would become president.

While both Democrats and Republicans gave broad support — above 92% in both cases — to their party’s candidate, self-identified independent voters broke much more evenly, with Harris holding a slight lead of 46%-42%.

For the poll, Suffolk University also oversampled Kent County, a key swing county in western Michigan, which Biden won by 6 percentage points in 2020. The results showed Harris had a lead there of 1 percentage point, 47.3%-46.3%. Those results polled likely 300 Kent County voters and the margin of error was plus or minus 5.65 percentage points.

Contact Todd Spangler: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter@tsspangler.