President Trump rapidly lost support in the critical swing state of Michigan as protests and civil unrest swept the nation at the beginning of June, sinking to 16 percentage points behind former Vice President Joe Biden, according to a statewide poll.
A survey from Lansing, Michigan, pollster EPIC-MRA that was conducted on 600 likely Michigan voters from May 31 to June 4 found that Biden had 55% support, while Trump had 39%.
That is a slightly bigger lead than what the firm found in another poll conducted from May 30 to June 4 that surveyed another 600 likely Michigan voters, which it did separately due to its clients commissioning too many questions to fit in one poll. That poll found that Trump was 12 points behind the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee: 53% to 31%.
Both polls had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 points.
The polls show a major shift from January, when the firm found that Trump was 6 points behind Biden. Most other recent polls compiled by RealClearPolitics found that Trump was only a few points behind Biden in the state.
Bernie Porn, a pollster for EPIC-MRA, said that the change in numbers was related to major nationwide protests sparked by the death of George Floyd, a black man from Minneapolis, after being held under a white police officer’s knee.
“Things that happen in the news are what typically cause changes like this, and the only thing you can point to that happened in the news was what happened on June 1,” he told the Detroit Free Press. “I attribute the dramatic slide to more saturation of that news coverage.”
