Democratic U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin holds an 8.5 percentage-point lead over Republican former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers in a new statewide poll in the race for the open U.S. Senate seat in Michigan, with Rogers trailing former President Donald Trump’s level of support in the state with two months to go until Election Day.
Slotkin, a three-term congresswoman from Holly, got 43.5% of support from survey respondents to 35% for Rogers, a former seven-term congressman from White Lake Township, with about 15% of respondents undecided ― many self-identified as independent voters.
Among the third-party hopefuls, about 3% of respondents said they’d be supporting Libertarian nominee Joseph Solis-Mullen, 1.5% Green Party nominee Douglas Marsh and 1% for U.S. Taxpayers candidate Dave Stein, according to the survey results.
The poll of 600 likely general election voters last week was commissioned by The Detroit News and WDIV-TV (Channel 4) and conducted by live operators from Aug. 26-29. It had a margin of error of plus-minus 4 percentage points.
Slotkin’s advantage builds on the five-point lead she had in a Detroit News-WDIV poll conducted July 22-24, two weeks before Slotkin and Rogers clinched their parties’ nominations in the Aug. 6 primary.
“Our polls have the race much closer, which is why we are continuing to invest millions of dollars in the Michigan Senate race,” said Maggie Abboud, spokeswoman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee that’s supporting Rogers.
“I’d bet Democrats’ polls have the race much closer, too, which is why they continue to invest millions of dollars in the Michigan Senate race.”
The nonpartisan Cook Political Report has rated the contest for the seat held by longtime incumbent Debbie Stabenow, D-Lansing, a tossup. Stabenow is retiring.
More: Presidential race is a tossup in Michigan with 2 months to go, poll finds
Key differences emerge
While Slotkin is winning 90% of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ voters in the new poll, Rogers is pulling only 72% of Trump’s voters.
The survey found Slotkin’s support is identical to that of Harris, who also garnered 43.5%. Trump is pulling 44.7%, but Rogers is 9.7 percentage points behind at 35%. Rogers won Trump’s endorsement back in March.
“Slotkin has fully secured her base in a much better way than Rogers has done so far. And unlike Harris, she is leading among those independent voters” by nearly 6 percentage points, said pollster Richard Czuba of the Lansing-based Glengariff Group, which conducted the survey.
“So she’s done everything she needs to do to make sure her base is on board and now can use the last 60 days to pivot to the center. But Rogers can still make up for votes on the Republican side ― there are still Republican votes for him to get. This could very well become a close race, but it’s going to take a lot of investment to do that.”
Czuba was referring to a dearth of positive ads on the air to boost Rogers. Czuba pointed to some of the name-identification data in the poll to explain Rogers’ problem: 44% of independent voters said they haven’t heard of him, as did 34.5% of voters who lean Republican and 28% of base Republican voters who are the GOP’s core supporters.
By comparison, 14.5% of base Democratic voters and 22% of lean Democrats had never heard of Slotkin, though she also has room to grow with independent voters, 47% of whom hadn’t heard of her, according to the survey.
“What’s clear is Rogers has not ever fully introduced himself to the voters, and we saw the same thing happen in 2022 when (GOP gubernatorial nominee) Tudor Dixon didn’t introduce herself to voters. What that does is allow the opposition to make the introduction for you,” Czuba said.
“I think, to a large degree, that’s what’s happening right now. Now, ’22 and ’24 are completely different elections, so that is why Mike Rogers still has the opportunity to close this and make this a very tight race.”
Dixon lost the 2022 race for governor to Democratic incumbent Gov. Gretchen Whitmer by nearly 11 percentage points.
How campaigns are targeting cash
Rogers’ campaign has done some hybrid ad spending with the National Republican Senatorial Committee, with about $500,000 spent through Monday and about $225,000 this week, according to ad-tracking data. The Rogers campaign also has paid for ads that mostly ran on digital platforms, including one focused on the economy and another slamming Slotkin for “lying” about him. Separately, the conservative political group Americans for Prosperity Action has been promoting Rogers in mail advertising.
Slotkin’s campaign is a different story. The powerhouse fundraiser has been on the air with television ads since late May and has spent over $5 million, much of that on spots introducing herself to voters and discussing issues such as drug prices and her late mom’s fight with health care companies.
Allies of both candidates have also spent millions on attack ads already, including from the NRSC ― which has committed $10 million to ad reservations ― One Nation and the pro-Rogers Great Lakes Conservatives Fund on the GOP side, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Senate Majority PAC-linked groups on the Democratic side.
More: Rogers-Slotkin marquee matchup expected to rank among most competitive Senate races
Two more groups are soon expected to start spending ― six figures starting this week from the Senate Majority-affiliated WinSenate that has committed $14 million to the Michigan race, and at least $3 million in spending by the crypto-focused Protect Progress PAC. A spokeswoman from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund said Monday the group has not made any decisions on Michigan spending yet.
Slotkin and her allies are trying to introduce their version of Rogers to voters, Czuba said, but not by tying him to Trump ― instead, they’re aiming to create a “separate negative persona” of Rogers as a politician/creature of Washington. Rogers’ campaign, notably, is trying to tie Slotkin to President Joe Biden’s record and make her out to be “everything that’s wrong with Washington.”
Jobs and the economy topped the list of issues influencing the votes of poll respondents, followed by abortion and women’s rights, and inflation and the cost of living.
What voters are saying
Detroiter Ricci Horst, 56, a self-employed subcontractor in the construction industry who participated in the poll, said he’s “definitely” not supporting Slotkin because she’s too radical and will instead vote for Rogers.
Horst’s top issue is the economy, raising concerns that any worker layoffs could affect his business if people stop or slow down work on their homes.
“What they’re doing to the auto industry is just horrible right now, trying to build Chinese battery plants for electric cars that aren’t going to work in the winter in Michigan,” Horst said.
“There’s a lot of issues with the waste and all that and same with solar farms, EV chargers and all that other crap the government has tried to push on us for the last four years. There’s definitely a lot wrong with the government.”
Horst said he’ll vote for Rogers because he’s for the auto industry and trying to keep jobs in Michigan.
“I don’t know exactly his views, but I know enough about him to know he’s better for Michigan,” Horst said. “He’s got America First values.”
More: Foes, supporters fight over whether Gotion battery plant will get built in west Michigan
State government employee Mike Belligan, 45, of Grand Rapids said his top issue heading into November is reproductive rights for women, which he sees as being at risk this election season.
“Honestly, it’s no contest to me. Mike Rogers has been in office previously … and he hasn’t shown me anything that would make me think he’d lend support for progressive policy. Just par for the course for him,” said Belligan, an environmental resource specialist for the Michigan Department of Transportation who participated in the poll.
“Given Mike Rogers’ past, I don’t think he’d be a voice of independence from the Republican Party. In the worst-case scenario for me of Donald Trump getting reelected, I’d want someone to resist his agenda. … This makes it that much more important to have a Democrat in that seat.”
Key voting groups
In the poll, Slotkin was ahead by 23 percentage points among college-educated voters, 51% to 28%.
The candidates were essentially tied among non-college educated voters, which has become a key Republican constituency. Rogers led among this group 39.8% to 37.8% for Slotkin, though this split is within the poll’s margin of error.
“That, to me, is really striking in these numbers. If Rogers can’t significantly take a lead amongst non-college voters, he can’t win. It’s that simple,” Czuba said.
“Trump is even with Harris in Michigan because of non-college voters. But this is the case where Trump’s voters don’t necessarily translate down the ticket, and it’s specifically with those non-college voters.”
Non-college women are supporting Slotkin 41% to 38%, the survey found, compared with Rogers pulling 42% among the non-college men to Slotkin’s 35%. The poll, however, also identified a segment of respondents who identified as “probable” rather than “definite” voters, many of them men under 40 without a college education who are less motivated to vote.
“For both Trump and Rogers, there is a small segment of their vote that has a motivation problem, which is why I think you’re seeing so much effort being paid to talking to men in rural areas,” Czuba said.
Rogers just finished a swing through the Upper Peninsula over the weekend, with stops in Iron Mountain and Houghton and a five-mile walk over the Mackinac Bridge on Labor Day.
Slotkin was winning female voters overall in the survey by 21 percentage points, though 19% of women remain undecided. Rogers was winning by 4.4% among men, with 11% of male voters undecided, according to the poll.
Rogers was ahead by 10.3 percentage points among out-state voters (those outside the Metro Detroit region), 43.5% to 33.2%, where 18.4% of voters undecided on the Senate contest. Slotkin was winning Metro Detroit voters by a 2-1 margin, 54.2% to 26.1%, the survey found.
“There’s room for him to move these numbers, but he’s this isn’t going to be done by just visiting them on these campaign trips,” Czuba said. “If you’re not on the air, voters aren’t hearing you.”
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Publish date : 2024-09-03 16:00:00
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