Washington Post: Michigan is Tied

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Yesterday we looked at the polls coming out of Michigan and noticed some evidence of herding. In other words, the polling doesn’t show the normal distributin you would expect in which some polls show one candidate up and another down almost at random. Polls should create a bell curve which gives you an idea where the race actually is, i.e. somewhere near the peak of the distribution. What they should not do is all fall within a point of one another.

Most of the recent polls in Michigan show a tied race with less than a point between the candidates, but a few recent polls also show Harris up 4-5 points over Trump. And that’s it. There hasn’t been any other variation this month, which is odd. The herding theory suggests that pollsters have made so many adjustments to their data to avoid the mistakes they made in 2016 and 2020 that they have essentially ironed out all the natural variation.

In any case, we have another new poll out of Michigan today, this one from the Washington Post, and it falls right in line with the others. Among likely voters, it shows Harris with a narrow edge but Trump is winning on the issues.

The Post poll finds registered voters split 47 percent for Trump and 45 percent for Harris. Likely voters tilt the other way, with 47 percent supporting Harris and 46 percent backing Trump. Both margins are within the poll’s margin of error of 3.7 percentage points, indicating either candidate could hold a lead. Harris’s slightly better standing with likely voters owes to the fact that more of her supporters have participated in recent elections…

Trump has clear advantages in the Wolverine State: Nearly 6 in 10 registered voters rate the national economy negatively, despite declining inflation and steady economic growth, and 76 percent of likely voters in this group support him for president, according to the poll.

More than half the electorate (57 percent) say the economy is an extremely important issue, the highest of any polled. Trump also holds a seven-point edge over Harris when voters were asked which candidate would better handle the economy. On the specific question of which candidate would do more to help middle-class workers — often a topic where Democrats have a polling advantage — voters are split about evenly.

And more good news for Trump:

Nearly half of Michigan voters say immigration is extremely important to their vote (47 percent), and among Republicans, this rises to 71 percent. Overall immigration as an issue ranks second behind only the economy. Voters say they think Trump would do a better job handling immigration than Harris, by 51 percent to 38 percent.

So Trump is winning on issue #1 and on issue #2. Harris’ best issue, not surprisingly, is abortion. Democrats say it is their top issue and Harris leads Trump by 13% on this one. 

But there’s more bad news for Harris when it comes to Black voters. They support Harris 63-21 which is historically low. Biden won 92% of Black voters four years ago. Also, Democrats are counting on union support but the poll shows union households are almost evenly split with just a 2 point advantage for Harris, 48-46.

The only bad news for Trump here is that his voters haven’t turned out for early voting they way they have in some other states (like Nevada). So far about a third of likely voters have turned in their ballots and they favor Harris 56-34. So Trump is going to need a big election day win to balance that out.

The Five Thirty Eight average of polls shows some improvement for Harris today, thanks largely to that CNN poll we talked about yesterday. She was up 0.7 points but now she’s up 1.1 points.