If Donald Trump manages to win Michigan for the first time since the 2016 election, voters 50 years of age and older may be the reason.
A new AARP poll of the Wolverine State shows the former president narrowly leads Democrat Kamala Harris, 49% to 48%, in a two-way ballot test.
And Trump leads the vice president by 2 points among voters 50 and up in that scenario.
Though the race is tied at 46% when minor candidates are added to the mix (a motley crew led by Robert Kennedy Jr.’s 3%), Trump still leads by 1 point among the 50+ set, and that’s pivotal, given AARP reports 9 out of 10 older voters say they’re almost certain to vote, compared with just 76% of the younger set.
In both the head-to-head and the full-ballot test, the overall gender gap is stark, with Trump leading with men by roughly 20 points and Harris holding a commensurate advantage with women.
Yet there are significant cohorts swinging to Trump as the campaign nears a close.
Part of Trump’s strength in both ballot tests comes from independents. He’s up +10 in the binary battle and holds a 7-point edge on the full ballot.
Another Trump bulwark comes from senior swing voters — nonpartisans whose decisions ultimately can turn an election one way or the other and who account for 1 in every 6 of those 50 and older who’ll vote this year.
Trump dominates among that cohort, with a 12-point lead, and more undecided or just turned off: 24% say they don’t know who they’ll vote for, and 15% say they’ll opt out of the presidential election altogether.
In less favorable news for the former president, this poll suggests his support among black voters stands at an anemic 5%, 81 points behind Harris in a full-field scenario and 85 points in a head-to-head heat.
Some Michigan polls have shown Trump with four times as much support from the community, which the former president and surrogates have courted this cycle.
Though Trump appears to have a path to eke out a victory, the window is more narrow in the Senate battle between a former congressman and a current member of the House; Republican Mike Rogers is down 49% to 46% against Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin.
“Democrats are voting for Slotkin by an 89-point margin, with Rogers only winning Republicans by 82-points. However, Rogers leading Independents by 5-points helps him keep the race close,” AARP remarks.
Swing voters appear to be ticket splitters here, with Rogers unable to tap into the Trump magic.
Slotkin is up 2 points overall with voters over 50 years of age. And with swing voters, she’s up 10, suggesting that roughly 1 in 10 of them will choose Trump as president and an ideological opponent to represent the state for the next six years in the Senate.
The survey, conducted by Republican firm Fabrizio Ward and Democratic Impact Research, was in the field between Oct. 2 and 8, with “a statewide representative sample of 600 likely voters, an oversample of 470 likely voters age 50 and older, and an additional oversample of 312 Black likely voters age 50 and older.”