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A new poll out of Michigan shows Kamala Harris and Donald Trump tied in the key state with just over 100 days to go until Election Day. According to the Detroit News-WDIV-TV poll, conducted after Biden dropped out of the presidential race and Harris jumped in, Harris and Trump are tied at 41 percent among likely voters in the general election.
The poll also found that third-party candidate Robert Kennedy Jr., who is running in the state as the Natural Law Party nominee, has the support of 10 percent of likely voters. Another 6 percent of voters are undecided. Drill down further and Harris has a slim lead of one-third of a percentage point over Trump, but that’s well within the margin of error.
The new poll suggests that the state of the race in Michigan, seen as critical for Democrats to win in November, has undergone a dramatic shift from when Biden was in the race. A similar survey conducted by the group in Michigan six months ago showed Biden trailing Trump by eight points in a head-to-head race in the state, 47 percent to 39 percent, with 3 percent of likely voters undecided.
According to the poll released Thursday, Kennedy leads among independent voters, but there is a close-to-even split between those who lean Republican and those who lean Democratic. He is at 27 percent of the polls, Harris at 26 percent and Trump at 25 percent among independents, but nearly 18 percent of independents are undecided.
Trump won the state in 2016, but Biden flipped it blue again in 2020, winning by just over 150,000 votes over the former president. Democrats and Republicans have both campaigned hard in the swing state in the run-up to November. The poll comes just days after Donald Trump held his first rally in Michigan since formally accepting the Republican presidential nomination at the convention in Milwaukee.
His Grand Rapids rally was also his first with running mate J.D. Vance, whom he announced at the last minute during the convention. The pick of the Ohio senator was seen as a move that could help the ex-president with Rust Belt voters, but the conservative leanings and anti-abortion stance of the GOP vice presidential candidates could be a problem, particularly among women in Michigan, where abortion rights have been a top issue in the 2022 midterm elections.
Meanwhile, Harris has yet to decide who her running mate will be with a looming deadline, as Democratic congressional leaders have an Aug. 7 deadline to officially nominate candidates for the top of their ticket. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has been mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate.
While the governor has endorsed Harris for president and pledged to help her get elected, Whitmer said in an interview this week that she is committed to finishing her second term in the state after she is re-elected in the 2022 midterm elections. President Biden held a rally in Detroit a little over a week before dropping out of the presidential race.
Harris made a campaign stop in Kalamazoo a little over a week ago, when she was still the presumptive vice presidential nominee. Although Whitmer has been promoting Harris in the state, the vice president has not yet set a date to return to Michigan as the presumptive presidential nominee.
