Harris and Trump virtually tied in Michigan

A new poll of likely Michigan voters conducted by Suffolk University/USA Today shows a tied race heading into Tuesday’s presidential election between former Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

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

The latest polls showed the Michigan race was a virtual showdown between the two major party candidates.

The new poll showed Trump leading Harris 47.4% to 47%, which is within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points. In this poll of 500 Michiganders, the difference is just two voters.

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

Only 1.4% of respondents said they were undecided or refused to answer. The University of Suffolk conducted the survey between last Thursday and Sunday.

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

Polling results for the presidential race showed a wide and almost even 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 former Republican president, and black voters split 82-15% for the Democratic vice president, who, if elected, would become the first woman, first black woman and first woman of South Asian descent, who will become president.

While both Democrats and Republicans gave broad support – exceeding 92% in each case – to their party’s candidate, self-identified independent voters were much more evenly split, with Harris leading narrowly 46-42%.

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

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