Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), the U.S. Democrat senate nominee, has warned that Vice President Kamala Harris may be “underwater” in her race against former President Donald Trump in Michigan.
Speaking with donors at a fundraiser last Wednesday attended by Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Slotkin said she is “not feeling my best right now about where we are on Kamala Harris in a place like Michigan,” a swing state that Trump won in 2016 before losing to Joe Biden in 2020.
“We have her underwater in our polling,” Slotkin said in a video clip obtained by Axios.
Slotkin did not provide exact polling numbers and gave no comment when pressed by Axios.
The latest polls out of Michigan show that the race has been tightening between the two candidates, with Harris either holding a slim lead or Trump locked in a virtual tie. The FiveThirtyEight average of polls put Harris up by just two points in the state while a New York Times/Siena College poll put her up by one. Since both polls stand within the margin of error, the race could be best described as a virtual tie.
During the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton stood ahead of Donald Trump by just three points around this time in September. As Breitbart News reported eight years ago:
Donald Trump is within striking distance of Hillary Clinton in the deep blue state of Michigan, according to a poll by The Detroit Free Press and WXYZ-TV.
Trump got 35 percent, while Clinton got only 38 percent in the poll of 600 likely Michigan voters, executed Sept. 10 through Sept. 13. Libertarian Gary Johnson followed with 10 percent and Green Party nominee Dr. Jill Stein polled at four percent.
In a Trump v. Clinton two-way, Clinton leads Trump with 42 percent to his 38 percent.
At the time, Trump had improved dramatically following an eight-point deficit in June of that year. However, around the same time in 2020, another poll put Trump ahead of Joe Biden in Michigan by 0.7 points before the former president went on to lose the state to Biden by just under three points — 50.62 percent to 47.84 percent.
Unless either Trump or Kamala Harris pulls ahead dramatically in the Michigan race, the state will likely remain in the tossup category well into Election Day.
As for Elissa Slotkin in her bid for senator, a recent Atlas Intel poll put her down 5.7 percentage points behind her Republican opponent Mike Rogers.
