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GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has a 7-point lead over President Biden in Michigan — more than double what it was just a month ago, a new poll shows.
Trump notched a 49%-42% edge over Biden in a two-race, and in a five-way battle, came out ahead at 43%, followed by Biden at 36%, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at 8%, Green Party hopeful Jill Stein at 2% and Cornel West at 2%, according to the Free Press/EPIC-MRA poll
In both cases, about 9% of voters were undecided.
Perhaps most alarmingly for Biden, the poll shows Trump with a lead over his 2020 nemesis in every key region of the state.
The poll — taken after the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump — also amounts to the former president more than doubling his lead over Biden in Michigan since another Free Press/EPIC-MRA survey in June, when Trump had a 3-point lead, 49% to Biden’s 45%.
Michigan, which carries a hefty 15 Electoral College votes, is widely regarded as one of the top seven battleground states needed to win the presidency.
Biden and Trump have ferociously battled back and forth over the key election state since 2016, when Trump won it. Biden then took it back in 2020.
On average, Trump currently has a 2.1-point advantage over Biden in the Wolverine State, according to the latest RealClearPolitics aggregate of a two-way race. In a five-way race, that slips to 1.5 points.
Trump is ahead of Biden in most of the key battleground states and even national matchups, according to RCP.
The 78-year-old former president swung through Grand Rapids, Mich., on Saturday for his first major rally since being officially crowned the Republican nominee for president during the Republican National Convention on Thursday.
Vice presidential nominee JD Vance (R-Ohio) joined him on the campaign stump.
The incumbent president is facing calls from nearly three dozen congressional Democrats to step aside over concerns about his age and ability to dispatch Trump.
When asked about whether he should step aside, 46% of Democrat voters in the Free Press/EPIC-MRA poll said he should, while 43% said he shouldn’t, and 11% were undecided.
Among Republicans and Independents, 55% want him to, 32% feel he shouldn’t, and the others were undecided.
Top issues among voters are inflation (31%), immigration (17%) and abortion (12%), according to the poll.
The survey indicated that many voters were not familiar with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a transition plan pitched by the ultra-conservative group if Trump wins the presidency.
Biden’s campaign and Democrats have been pummeling Trump and the GOP over Project 2025, casting the proposal as extreme and zeroing in on its plans to dismantle chunks of the government.
Trump has publicly distanced himself from the project.
Only 27% of those polled said they were a little bit familiar with it, compared to 15% who were very familiar and 57% who didn’t know much about it.
“Some on the right, severe right, came up with this Project ’25,” Trump said during his Michigan rally. “I don’t even know, I mean, some of them, I know who they are, but they are very, very conservative. They’re sort of the opposite of the radical left. You have the radical left, and you have the radical right.”
Another key finding in the poll was that Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) is running ahead of Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) 43% to 40% in the battle for the state’s open Senate seat, while 17% were undecided.
The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points and was conducted from July 13-17. In other words, the pollsters began the survey of about 600 people the same day Trump was shot at.
“It’s only going to add to the pressure on Biden to step aside and have someone replace him,” EPIC-MRA pollster Bernie Porn told the Free Press. “The Democrats are in a difficult position.”