A Conservative Intelligence/Harper poll shows Michigan Republican Senate candidate Terri Lynn Land leading Democrat Gary Peters 44 percent-36 percent. Land is a former two-term secretary of state; Peters is a three-term congressman from the black-majority 14th district. This gives Land a narrow 39.4 percent-38.8 percent lead in the RealClearPolitics average of polls taken in the last five months (a March 2013 Harper poll also showed Land leading by 8 percent, but the 29 percent-21 percent result meant that half the voters had no choice).

The current poll still has 20 percent on the fence and neither of these candidates has a high statewide profile. Secretary of state is normally not a high-visibility office (it issues license plates). Land was elected 55 percent-43 percent in 2002 and re-elected 56 percent-42 percent in 2006, years in which Democrat Jennifer Granholm was elected governor; Land has not been on the statewide ballot since 2006. Peters won a suburban congressional district in 2008, by beating Republican incumbent Joe Knollenberg 52 percent-43 percent, and was re-elected 50 percent-47 percent in 2010. Redistricting switched him to a district stretching from inner city Detroit to Pontiac, where in August 2012 he beat black-Bangladeshi one-term incumbent Hansen Clarke 47 percent-35 percent in the Democratic primary. Two other black candidates won 17 percent of the vote, and so he must have considered himself vulnerable in a one-on-one primary against a well-known black challenger. So this looks like a race between a Republican who has nothing political to lose and a Democrat who has decided it’s up or out.