Gretchen Whitmer on course for easy reelection victory, poll finds

GOP anger over Covid guidelines appears to be insufficient to oust incumbent

Democrats are on course to hold on to the governor’s mansion in Michigan as Tudor Dixon’s campaign is failing to pick up steam in the race’s crucial home stretch, a CBS New/YouGov poll finds.

The poll, published on Sunday, shows Gretchen Whitmer six points ahead of her GOP opponent. It mirrors other polls of the race, including one from the GOP-aligned Trafalgar Group in late September which found the same gap between the candidates. Other recent surveys have even shown Ms Whitmer’s lead to be in the double digits as recently as late last month.

At the clear centre of the issues for the GOP in Michigan is Ms Dixon’s label as an “extreme” member of her party, likely due to her embrace of former president Donald Trump’s false and outrageous conspiracies about the 2020 election. That genre of nonsense has proven to be a drag on GOP candidates in purple states like Michigan and Wisconsin, where incumbent Sen Ron Johnson is attempting to escape a similar label. Ms Dixon was described as “extreme” by 55 per cent of voters in the poll and just over a third said that Mr Trump’s endorsement of her made them less likely to support. Only 19 per cent said the opposite.

By contrast, six in ten voters said that they viewed Ms Whitmer as “mainstream”.

Also buoying Ms Whitmer’s candidacy for reelection is a slight lead on the issue of her performance as governor — 52 per cent said that they believe she is doing a good job. The exact same 52-48 margin approved of her response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Ms Dixon’s support among women and minorities is also clearly lagging in the poll. Polled about which candidate would take actions as governor that would “help” or “hurt” various demographics of people, 47 per cent said they believed Ms Dixon’s policies would hurt women, and 46 per cent said that her actions as governor would hurt Black or Hispanic persons. Likely contributing to her problems with women is the issue of abortion, which ranked third among voters’ top concerns in the survey behind the economy and inflation (which arguably are one issue).

The CBS poll included responses from 1,285 registered voters in Michigan between 3-6 October. The margin of error is 3.6 percentage points.