Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are seemingly in a dead heat in Michigan.
A new AARP poll from the bipartisan team of Fabrizio-Ward and Impact Research revealed Trump is polling 2 percentage points ahead of Harris in a race with third-party candidates in the mix, but they are both polling equally in a head-to-head matchup. Trump garnered 45% of the support to Harris’s 43%, with independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pulling 6% of the support.
The race is tied at 48% in a head-to-head matchup between Harris and Trump. Both campaigns have strong support from within their respective parties in Michigan, but independents remain more undecided.
When broken down by age, voters 50 and older prefer Trump by 2 points.
“Michigan voters over age 50 are the biggest voting bloc and could tip the scale for any candidate in this election,” AARP Michigan State Director Paula Cunningham said. “If candidates want to win, they should pay attention to the issues that matter to voters over age 50, from protecting Social Security to supporting family caregivers, who are highly motivated to vote this November.”
Voters aged 18-34 may be the key here as they favor Trump by 5 points when third-party candidates are included. Seventeen percent of voters in that group indicated they were undecided or voting third party but leaned 1 point toward Harris in a head-to-head matchup against Trump.
Michigan spearheaded the “uncommitted” movement during the primary season, when more than 100,000 Michigan voters cast ballots withholding support for President Joe Biden to indicate they would not back him in the general election unless he changed his policies toward Israel and its war in Gaza. The matter could prove key for younger Michigan voters as it is unclear if or how they will embrace Harris at the top of the ticket.
When broken down by gender, Harris polls double digits ahead of Trump, with women preferring her 51% to Trump’s 38% when third-party candidates are included.
In the Senate race between Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, Slotkin is polling 3 points ahead of Rogers, as she gathered 47% of support to Rogers’s 44%. Rogers polls 5 points ahead among those aged 65 and older while Slotkin remains 4 points more popular among voters ages 50-64.
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In 2016, Trump narrowly flipped the state by more than 11,000 votes, less than half a percentage point. In 2020, Biden easily won the state by more than 150,000 votes, about 3 percentage points.
Methodology: The poll interviewed 1,382 likely voters, which includes a statewide sample of 600 likely voters, an oversample of 470 likely voters ages 50 and older, and an additional oversample of 312 black likely voters aged 50 and older. Interviews were conducted via live interviewers on landline (25%) and cellphone (37%) and SMS-to-web (38%). The sample was randomly drawn from the Michigan voter list. The margin of error is +/- 4% for the 600 statewide sample, +/- 3.5% for the 800 voters aged 50 and older, and +/- 4.9% for the 400 black voters.