Six months ahead of the November election, former President Donald Trump is leading Democrat incumbent Joe Biden by a whopping 15 points in Michigan, a key swing state. According to a Kaplan Strategies survey, the former president polled 51 percent to 36 percent in the battleground state. The margin of error for the survey was plus/minus 3.5 percentage points.
The pollster reports Trump's success is rooted in maintaining the stability of his favorability ratio, writing:
Key to Trump’s dominance in our poll has been his campaign’s ability to stabilize his favorable to unfavorable ratio to a degree better than Joe Biden has.
Abortion remains a major issue, with no consensus on how many weeks abortion should be legalized through, indicating that this issue is best served at the state level.
Other polls have also shown varying results for Michigan. An Emerson College/The Hill poll released earlier this week indicated Biden trailing Trump marginally in Michigan (44 percent to 45 percent), while a Bloomberg News and Morning Consult poll suggested Biden ahead of Trump (47 percent to 45 percent). However, Trump was polling ahead of Biden in six other key swing states, according to the latter poll, and was leading in all the swing states in the Emerson poll.
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Michigan's 16 electoral votes went to Trump in 2016, breaking up the "Blue Wall" of states that had consistently voted for Democratic presidential candidates, including Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Trump's success in The Great Lakes State propelled him to the White House by galvanizing working-class Rust Belt voters and reshaping the Republican Party into a blue-collar populist stronghold.
And, the former president won the battleground state by an extremely thin margin, edging out Democrat Hillary Clinton 47.50 percent to 47.27 percent, resulting in a victory margin of approximately 0.23 percentage points.
While a 15-point lead is welcomed news to Trump's supporters, not everyone agrees or puts much weight in this poll. FiveThirtyEight ranks Kaplan Strategies 82nd in its list of reputable pollsters by historical track record and methodological transparency.
Heath Brown, an associate professor of public policy at City University of New York, previously told Newsweek that the race was "very close," saying:
The polling over the last several months indicates this is a very close race. I wouldn't read too much into any one or two polls at this point. The trend seems to be that the campaign will be a very tight one and I suspect the polls will reflect that until November.
The Kaplan poll also found Trump leading in three other battleground states. In Arizona, Biden trails by four points, 47 percent to 43 percent. In Pennsylvania, Trump is up by five, 46 percent to Biden's 41 percent. Lastly, in Wisconsin, Trump is ahead by double digits, 48 percent to 38 percent.
Kaplan Strategies surveyed over 800 people in each of the swing states from April 20 to April 21.
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