Poll: Biden leads Trump by 16 points in Michigan

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden leads President Trump by 16 points in Michigan, according to a new survey.

The latest EPIC-MRA poll, conducted for the Detroit Free Press, finds Biden at 55 percent support and Trump at 39 percent.

The poll was conducted while another EPIC-MRA survey was still underway in Michigan. The first survey found Biden ahead by 12 points. The new poll captures more recent data and includes two additional days.

Seventy percent of Michiganders surveyed said the country is on the wrong track, up from 63 percent in the prior poll.

Sixty-one percent also said they have a negative view of Trump, a 5-point increase, while the percentage of those who have a positive view of the president fell from 42 percent to 38 percent.

EPIC-MRA pollster Bernie Porn attributed the drop to an incident from early June when federal law enforcement personnel clashed with protesters as they sought to clear Lafayette Square in front of the White House so Trump could walk to a nearby church for a photo op.

“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,” Porn told the Free Press. “I attribute the dramatic slide to more saturation of that news coverage.”

Trump has been sliding badly in the polls over the past two months amid the economic slowdown brought on by the coronavirus pandemic and the protests that have wracked the nation since the police-involved killing of George Floyd.

The EPIC-MRA survey is the only poll of Michigan to be taken in June at the height of the protests.

A CNBC-Change Research poll from late May found Biden ahead in Michigan by 2 points. A Fox News survey from April put Biden’s advantage at 8 points.

Trump won Michigan in 2016 by only about 10,000 votes, becoming the first Republican presidential nominee to carry the state since 1988.

The new EPIC-MRA survey of 600 randomly selected voters was conducted from May 31 to June 4 and has a 4 percentage point margin of error.