What Michigan Polls Show About Harris vs Trump as Both Hold Events in State

With only three weeks until Election Day, both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are in Michigan this week, where polls show the race within the margin of error.
FiveThirtyEight’s poll tracker shows that Harris is marginally ahead of Trump in the key battleground state by 0.6 points, on 47.7 percent to the former president’s 47.1 percent. Pollster Nate Silver’s tracker puts her 0.7 points ahead.
Meanwhile, the RealClearPolitics tracker shows that Trump is ahead in the state by 0.9 points, with the former president overtaking Harris’ lead on October 9.
Individual polls have shown that the race is equally as tight, with the most recent RMG Research/Napolitan Institute poll, conducted between October 10 and 16, showing that the two candidates were tied. Recent polls by Mitchell Research and Communications and Redfield and Wilton Strategies also showed the race tied when third-party candidates were included.
Other polls have shown Harris and Trump within 1 or 2 points of each other—well within the margin of error. For example, the latest Morning Consult poll, conducted between October 6 and 15 among 1,065 likely voters put Harris ahead by 2 points—within the poll’s margin of error of +/-3 percentage points.
Another poll, conducted by Insider Advantage between October 8 and 9 among 800 likely voters, showed that Trump was 2 points ahead. The poll had a margin of error of 3.7 percent. Newsweek has contacted the Trump and Harris campaigns for comment via email.
Amid the tight race, both Harris and Trump are making campaign stops in Michigan this week, with Trump set to visit Oakland County on Friday before holding a rally in Detroit in the evening, while Harris will make her sixth trip to the state since she became the candidate, stopping in Grand Rapids, Lansing and Oakland County on Friday, Harris campaign spokesperson Alyssa Bradley confirmed Sunday.
During his visit, Trump will be hosted by the Building America’s Future group for a roundtable event in Oakland County that is also scheduled to include Republican Mike Rogers—who’s vying for Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat against U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin—as well as Florida Republican Congressman Byron Donalds.
Their discussion will focus on manufacturing jobs and the cost of living, according to a release from Trump’s campaign.
Meanwhile, Trump’s event in Detroit will be his first one there since insulting the city last week. While warning what will happen if Harris is elected, he said that “our whole country will end up being like Detroit.”
At the Detroit rally, Trump is expected to discuss inflation and manufacturing jobs in Michigan. “It’s painfully clear that Michiganders cannot afford four more years of Kamala Harris, and voters in the Great Lakes State know that a Trump-Vance administration will lower costs and protect the auto industry,” the Trump campaign said in a press release on Tuesday.
No details have been released for Harris’ visit. In Michigan, Harris has struggled to win endorsements from key unions, such as the firefighters union, traditionally a Democratic bloc. By a slim margin, the International Association of Firefighters declined to back any candidate this month. The union endorsed Biden four years ago. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters also declined to endorse Harris in September, saying neither she nor Trump had sufficient support from the 1.3 million-member union.
In addition, Arab American voters have been skeptical of Harris because of the White House’s support for Israel’s military operations in Gaza.
In an interview with the Associated Press on Thursday, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a co-chair of Harris’ campaign, said that the expectation was always that “it was going to be a close election.”
“People are like, ‘Oh it’s so close.’ And I’m like, have you not been listening for decades?” Whitmer said. “Michigan is a divided state. And that’s why we don’t write off the reddest of areas on a political map. We show up.”