Michigan Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon has a razor-thin lead over incumbent Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a new poll shows.
The survey of 1,097 respondents, conducted by the Trafalgar Group from November 5-7, showed Dixon with a lead of 0.3 percentage points over Whitmer just hours before polls opened in the Wolverine State.
According to the poll, Dixon leads Whitmer 48.5% to 48.2%. Libertarian Mary Buzuma takes 0.6% of the vote, and other candidates take 0.7%. Another 2% of voters were still undecided. Notably, the poll appears to oversample Democrats.
Democrats made up a majority of poll respondents, 54.5%, while Republicans were just 37.1% of the sample; non-partisan affiliated voters made up the remaining 8.4%. But according to data from Pew Research, 47% of voters in Michigan are Democrats or lean Democrat, while Republicans make up 34%, and 19% of voters have no partisan lean.
The Trafalgar Group, which rose to national prominence after being the only public pollster to correctly predict Donald Trump winning the state in 2016, is one of just two public pollsters showing Dixon with a slight lead over Whitmer.
Another poll from InsiderAdvantage and American Greatness in late October showed Dixon leading Whitmer, 44.8% to 44.6%, with 5.4% undecided.
Previous polls from both Trafalgar and InsiderAdvantage showed Whitmer holding onto a lead. Trafalgar’s mid-October poll with Michigan News Service had Whitmer leading 48.4% to 47.9%; the previous poll from InsiderAdvantage/American Greatness showed Whitmer leading 44.4% to 43.9%.
Another poll from Mitchell/MIRS found a statistical tie between the incumbent Democrat and her Republican challenger; Whitmer led 49% to 47% over Dixon, well within the poll’s 4.2% margin of error, with 3% of respondents undecided.
Dixon has been steadily gaining momentum, with the support of national leaders in the Republican Party. Former President Trump endorsed her during the primary; she has also picked up endorsements from former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and her husband, businessman Dick DeVos; Republican Governors Doug Ducey of Arizona, Kristi Noem of South Dakota, and Glenn Youngkin of Virginia; Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene; Republican Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake; Donald Trump Jr.; and former Democratic Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who left the Democratic Party last month. The RealClearPolitics average of polls currently shows Whitmer with a 1-point lead over Dixon. However, RCP projects Dixon to flip the Governor’s race on Tuesday, citing polling errors favoring Democrats by an average of 2.2 points between 2016 and 2020.
