Donald Trump is leading President Joe Biden in the crucial battleground state of Michigan, according to recent polling.
Trump was riding high as he arrived in Grand Rapids on Saturday for his first campaign rally since narrowly surviving an assassination attempt the week before. A gunman opened fire on the July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, leaving Trump with a bloodied ear, killing one of Trump’s supporters and injuring two others before he was shot dead by Secret Service agents.
In the days since, Trump formally accepted the GOP nomination, celebrated a legal victory and saw a boost in some national and swing state polls. It comes as Biden is continuing to face pressure to drop out of the presidential race after a disastrous debate performance in late June raised fresh concerns about the 81-year-old’s age and ability to beat the Republican in November.
Biden, who is isolating as he battles a COVID-19 infection, has repeatedly insisted he will remain in the race.
Trump addressed those calls during Saturday’s rally, polling the crowd on whether they would prefer his opponent in November to be Biden or his heir apparent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump first mentioned Harris, mispronouncing her name, which elicited boos from the crowd.
When he named “crooked Joe Biden,” the crowd’s booing intensified significantly. Trump also mentioned Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic governor of Michigan, who also received boos, but not as loudly as those for Biden.
Michigan is one of several swing states that could determine the outcome of November’s election. Trump narrowly won the state in 2016, but Biden won in 2020 by just 154,000 votes. There have been concerns about his ability to win Michigan—which has the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the nation—in November after more than 100,000 Michigan voters cast ballots for “uncommitted” in the state’s Democratic primary in February as a protest against Biden’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza.
FiveThirtyEight’s average of polls shows that Trump is leading Biden by 2.2 percentage points (43.6 percent to 41.4 percent) in Michigan as of Sunday.
Polls conducted since the assassination attempt have all had Trump leading.
A Civiqs survey of 532 registered Michigan voters conducted between July 13 and 16 had Biden trailing Trump by 3 percentage points, 46 percent to 43 percent. The same survey found that Trump and Harris were tied, with 46 percent support each. The survey has a margin of error of 5.3 percent.
An Emerson College poll, which surveyed 1,000 registered voters between July 15 and 16, also found Trump leading by 3 percentage points in a two-way matchup, with 46 percent supporting Trump, and 42 percent backing Biden. Trump maintained the same lead when third-party candidates were added. The poll has a margin of error of 2.1 percent.
Biden visited Michigan last week, where he touted his administration’s achievements and sought to hammer home the high stakes of November’s election.
“Another four years of Donald Trump is deadly serious,” he said during a rally in Detroit on July 12. “America needs to wake up and realize that Trump and his MAGA Republicans—what they’re trying to do. We’re going to join them, we’re going to engage them and we’re going to stop them.”
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