Michigan Primary Polls 2016: Democrat And Republican Results In Frontrunners’ Courts

The 2016 Michigan primary polls released their final predictions of Tuesday’s results this week, and both Democrats and Republicans may have fairly uneventful elections in the Great Lake State.

On the Republican side, Donald Trump is set to dominate Michigan’s 2016 primaries with poll numbers indicating a more than 10-point lead on his rivals. Surprisingly, his biggest competitor in the state is John Kasich, who has lagged behind Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz in the results in other preceding official votes.

In the Democratic primary, Michigan’s pre-vote polling is also largely showing a strong win for the frontrunner. Hillary Clinton is as far ahead as 37 points up against Bernie Sanders, with most recent polls putting her at less than a 10-point advantage. However, a poll released Monday by Michigan State University showed Bernie closing the gap to just five points.

Picking through the polls on both the Republican and Democratic side, it is clear that there is a general trend toward Hillary and Donald, but it’s also worth noting that the numbers are still quite divided among the five Michigan polls presented. Trump, for example, is actually losing with 31 percent to Kasich’s 33 percent in one such survey conducted by the American Research Group. It’s also notable that ARG had some of the least accurate polling in 2012, with Nate Silver’s New York Times‘ blog Five Thirty Eight even remarking that it had “long been unreliable.”

In addition, that poll has the lowest sample size, 400 likely voters, of the selection discussed in this article. Trafalgar Group featured the responses of 1,604 likely Republican voters and called an 18-point lead for Donald along with a 22-point lead from Mitchell Research Group. These numbers also line up much more closely with the Michigan primary’s other data. On average, Trump walks away with a 15-percent victory. That’s partially due to close competition between Ted Cruz and Kasich, says the pollster’s CEO Steve Mitchell.

“Trump looks likely to win [based on our polling], but Cruz has a strong ground operation in Michigan. The big problem for Kasich and Cruz is that they are both doing better and therefore making it more difficult for each to win. Meanwhile, Trump’s support doesn’t seem to have fallen as it did in all four states yesterday where he did not do nearly as well as pre-election day polling said he would do.”

Michigan’s 2016 Democratic primary polls are also projecting a definitive outcome. Clinton is trouncing Sanders between an 11- and 37-percent spread. While none of them feature the large sample size of the Trafalgar numbers, Hillary’s most decisive win comes from the same Mitchell company that mirrored those results on the Republican side. Still, it’s worth noting that there is a wide variation in these pre-vote statistics — making it difficult to know how many delegates Clinton will walk away with.

Of course, Michigan is just one facet of Tuesday’s 2016 primary polls. Republicans will also caucus in Hawaii and vote in Idaho and Mississippi. In the latter southern state, they’ll be joined by Democrats.

Still, Michigan’s larger population makes it the biggest grab of the primary night on both sides. Republicans will be vying for 59 delegates, the 10th most offered by any state, as opposed to 40, 32 and 19 from Mississippi, Idaho, and Hawaii respectively, according to The Green Papers. Democrats will also have four times as many delegates in Michigan compared to Mississippi: 130 pledged and 17 unpledged delegates are at stake there.

Do you think the Democratic and Republican results have already been tied up by the 2016 Michigan primary polls?

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