Bill Schuette and Gretchen Whitmer
With the Nov. 6 election just about nine weeks away, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gretchen Whitmer is leading Republican Bill Schuette in a statewide poll 49.8 percent to 36.1 percent.
Jonathan Oosting writes in The Detroit News:
The survey of 600 likely Michigan voters conducted for The Detroit News and WDIV-TV shows support for Whitmer was especially strong among female, college-educated, Metro Detroit and senior voters. Roughly nine weeks out from the Nov. 6 election, more respondents said they had heard of Schuette than Whitmer, but fewer said they liked the two-term attorney general.
Whitmer had a nearly 14-percentage-point lead in the Sept. 5-7 survey, which has a margin of error of plus-minus 4 percentage points.
Another 4 percent of voters said they would pick a third-party candidate, including 2.3 percent who would back Libertarian Bill Gelineau, and 10 percent were undecided.
Gov. Rick Snyder has refused to endorse fellow Republican Schuette, who as the state's attorney general has gone after some of the governor's staff in the Flint water investigation.
Schuette is a solid backer of President Donald Trump, which could hurt him, as the paper notes:
President Donald Trump has become unpopular with Michigan voters, and his poor rating threatens to drag down Republican candidates up and down the Nov. 6 ticket, according to a new statewide poll.
The survey conducted last week . . . showed women and independent voters hold especially negative opinions of the president two years after he narrowly won the state.
