I wrote earlier about the new Insider Advantage post-debate poll on Michigan that now shows former President Donald Trump up by one, 49 to 48 percent, with 800 likely voters over Sept 11-12.
It actually moved three points from Harris +2 to Trump +.1 on August 8.
I wanted to take a deeper dive into the backend of the poll.
According to pollster Matt Towery, one reason was a five-point lead with independents.
“The poll also showed a slightly higher amount of support for Trump among African-Americans (around 20%), which may be an aberration, or a reflection of higher African-American numbers seen in recent national surveys such as The New York Times survey,” Towery adds
That 20% threshold is significant, given Trump campaign surrogates told The Post this summer they hope to get 25% to 30% of the black-male vote. The former president garnered just 12% of the black vote in 2020.
Now that appears to be in line with both other indications of independents being for Trump that we’ve seen in other measures including an NPR/Marist poll and the Fox focus group that showed how closely independents were tracking with Republicans. But if that and the 20 percent black vote are accurate, Harris could be in big trouble there. I say that with my usual caution about “polls.”
Insider Advantage was one of the most accurate polls in 2020 and this poll follows another local poll from the Detroit News that also had Trump up by 1 point the week before.
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Towery thought that the debate had “little to no impact” on the numbers. So if the Dems thought Harris was going to take a big hop in the polls, they’re out of luck in this one. Co/efficient’s survey also had Trump with a 25 point lead with independents, even though it had Harris slightly ahead.
As I noted earlier, CBS’ Major Garrett was also finding that the support for Trump in Michigan was “real and resilient” when he went there and questioned voters, and he was finding it everywhere he went to interview people.
Harris needs to convince the independents but as we can see with this poll they’re not convinced.
When you speak to them what they say is that she’s not answering questions and/or isn’t saying how she would be different from Joe Biden, who they think has failed. Even CNN’s Jake Tapper called her out for that.
READ MORE: Prepare for Meltdowns: CBS Report, Post-Debate Poll Show Good News for Trump in Michigan
If you just give them gas and are not giving them a reason to move to you, they’re not going to.
They know how bad things have been under Biden. They all remember things were better under Trump.
