Support for Donald Trump is weakening in Michigan, while both Ted Cruz and John Kasich are on the rise, says a new poll of the Republican primary there by Monmouth University. The poll found Trump with the support of 36 percent of Michigan Republicans, who will vote in the presidential primary on Tuesday, with Cruz earning 23 percent and Kasich 21 percent. Marco Rubio has just 14 percent support.
Monmouth conducted its poll over four days, before and after the weekend’s five nominating contests, and found an interesting shift in the latter half of their polling. “In interviews conducted Thursday and Friday, Trump held a solid lead with 39% support compared to 22% for Cruz, 17% for Kasich, and 14% for Rubio. The race was much tighter in Saturday and Sunday interviews at 32% for Trump, 26% for Kasich, 25% for Cruz, and 12% for Rubio,” the polling outfit reports.
That’s a noticeable shift in support away from Trump and toward Cruz and Kasich, who is the governor of neighboring Ohio. Rubio, who at one point in February had a modest second-place position in the few Michigan polls that had been conducted, appears to have stalled. There are a couple of possible factors at work here, the most obvious being that Thursday’s Fox News debate in Detroit may have been as bad for Trump as it first appeared. Cruz and Kasich, on the other hand, had very good debate performances. Furthermore Cruz won the Kansas caucuses and Maine primary, and very nearly won in Louisiana against Trump, on Saturday, following a strong second-place showing on Super Tuesday.
So what to expect on Tuesday’s primary? The Real Clear Politics average of polls for Michigan still gives Trump an 18-point lead over Cruz and Kasich. But the later movement away from Trump in the Monmouth poll suggests voters in Michigan may follow the pattern of other late-deciding GOP primary voters have done so far.
Ahead of Saturday’s Louisiana primary, for instance, Trump had a commanding 15.6-point lead over Cruz in the final RCP average, at 43 percent support. Trump’s actual vote total in Louisiana wasn’t far off, at 41 percent, but his margin of victory nearly evaporated to just 3.6 points over Cruz. The Texas senator earned a little over 37 percent of the vote in Louisiana, 10 points higher than his final RCP poll average support. The numbers suggest he pulled support from Rubio, but there’s evidence Cruz closed well among voters who made their decision just before they voted. As the Washington Post‘s Philip Bump notes, Cruz saw a big boost among those who voted on election day versus those who voted absentee.
A similar phenomenon may have happened last week in Virginia, where the final RCP average showed Trump winning the state by more than 14 points when he actually won by fewer than 3 points. Again, Trump’s actual level of support (34 percent) wasn’t far off from his final poll average (36 percent), but Rubio performed almost 10 points better than his final poll average to come in a close second at just under 32 percent.
Using these examples as a model, it’s reasonable to expect Trump to do about as well in Michigan Tuesday as the polls say he is. But either Kasich, Cruz, or both might also be reasonably expected to overperform by winning the remaining undecided voters.
Unlike in Louisiana and many of the Super Tuesday states, there is no early voting in Michigan, so both Kasich and Cruz have every reason to think they can improve their margins significantly there. Kasich has been campaigning in Michigan for days, and Cruz will hold a rally in Grand Rapids Monday night.
