Trump’s chances of beating Biden in Michigan, according to recent polls

In the crucial swing state of Michigan, Donald Trump is ahead of President Joe Biden, according to recent polls.

Trump was in high spirits 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 at the July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, leaving Trump with a bloody ear. One of his supporters was killed and two others wounded before he was shot and killed by Secret Service agents.

In the days that followed, Trump formally accepted the Republican nomination, celebrated a legal victory and saw a surge in some national and swing-state polls. Biden remains under pressure to drop out of the presidential race after a disastrous debate performance in late June raised new doubts about the 81-year-old’s age and ability to beat the Republican in November.

Biden, who is in quarantine due to a COVID-19 infection, has repeatedly insisted that he will stay in the race.

Trump addressed these demands at his rally on Saturday, asking the crowd whether they would prefer Biden or his designated successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, as his opponent in November.

When Trump first mentioned Harris, he mispronounced her name, earning boos from the crowd.

When he mentioned “fraudulent Joe Biden” by name, the booing from the crowd became even more intense. Trump also mentioned Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic governor of Michigan, who was also booed, although not as loudly as 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 by just 154,000 votes in 2020. There were doubts about whether he could win Michigan – which has the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the country – in November after more than 100,000 Michigan voters voted “undecided” in the Democratic primary in February in protest of Biden’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza.

The average of FiveThirtyEight polls shows that Trump is 2.2 percentage points ahead of Biden in Michigan as of Sunday (43.6 percent to 41.4 percent).

In all polls conducted since the assassination, Trump was ahead.

According to a Civiqs poll of 532 registered voters in Michigan conducted between July 13 and 16, Biden trailed Trump by three percentage points, 46 percent to 43 percent. The same poll found Trump and Harris tied at 46 percent support each. The poll’s margin of error is 5.3 percent.

An Emerson College poll of 1,000 registered voters between July 15 and 16 also found Trump leading by three percentage points in a two-way race, with 46 percent supporting Trump and 42 percent supporting Biden. Trump maintained his lead as 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 tried to make it clear that much is at stake in the November election.

“Four more years of Donald Trump is deadly serious,” he said during a rally in Detroit on July 12. “America needs to wake up and realize what Trump and his MAGA Republicans are trying to do. We will join them, we will fight them and we will stop them.”