Todd Spangler

Detroit Free Press

WASHINGTON — Less than a month after it appeared Donald Trump might be on the verge of catching Hillary Clinton in Michigan, a new Free Press/WXYZ-TV poll released Thursday showed the state joining a growing list of battlegrounds that look increasingly out of reach for the Republican nominee.

Clinton regained an 11-point, 43%-32%, lead over Trump in the new poll, the same level of support she had following a successful nominating convention in Philadelphia in July and far outdistancing last month's results, when her 3-point lead over Trump was within the poll's margin of error and suggested he might catch her in a state that hasn't backed a Republican nominee since 1988.

Now, following a poor debate performance, revelations about his taxes and erratic behavior, it appears Trump may have squandered that chance, despite multiple visits to Michigan, as key voting blocs including women, African Americans and millennials appear to solidify support for Clinton with less than five weeks until the Nov. 8 election.

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“The race is much more settled now, no matter what demographic group you’re looking at,” said Bernie Porn, the pollster for Lansing-based EPIC-MRA, which performed the survey for the Free Press, WXYZ-TV (Channel 7) and their outstate partners. “It’s hard to imagine (Clinton losing Michigan) unless Hillary has a health (or some other) issue. … I think the perceptions of Trump are pretty baked in.”

In a head-to-head race, the poll showed Clinton with a 10-percentage-point lead — 46%-36% — over Trump. Asked about all four major candidates running, 43% of those surveyed backed Clinton, with 32% for Trump, 10% for Libertarian Gary Johnson, 3% for the Green Party’s Jill Stein and 12% undecided or refusing to answer. In September, Trump had cut Clinton's lead in Michigan to 38%-35%.

EPIC-MRA surveyed 600 likely voters between last Saturday and this Monday for the poll, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. The results continued a string of bad news for Trump, who has seen support nationwide drop since the Sept. 26 presidential debate. Those polls not only show Trump trailing in Michigan and Pennsylvania — two states where he hoped to break through with disaffected, white working-class voters — but in several other battlegrounds where he had previously led, including Florida, North Carolina and Nevada.

The Trump campaign raised questions about the poll, noting that EPIC-MRA failed to predict U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders' victory over Clinton in Michigan's March Democratic primary and arguing that Clinton's visit to Detroit next week — only her second since becoming the Democratic nominee — could suggest she needs to shore up her standing in the state.

But those complaints fail to recognize primaries have wide variables in turnout and other factors that make them harder to predict than general elections and that EPIC-MRA has an A- rating from FiveThirtyEight.com, which analyzes polls and pollsters. As for Clinton's visit, it's part of a voter registration effort the day before the state's Oct. 11 deadline to register.

Trump, a businessman, real estate mogul and reality TV star may have a tough time regaining momentum in Michigan with 33 days left in the race as his negative ratings climb and segments of the public he was counting on to win — men and voters with a high school diploma or less education — are not backing him as strongly as was expected.

Trump could potentially close the gap with a strong second debate performance Sunday at Washington University in St. Louis. But he'd almost certainly need other help in the form of a Clinton stumble — such as when she called a portion of Trump's supporters "deplorables," a remark she later clarified — or new revelations about her time as secretary of state or continued scrutiny of her husband's charitable foundation.

But that would also require Trump to show far more discipline and stay on message in the face of continuing revelations and questions regarding his own foundation and its structure, his past behavior and business dealings, and a level of experience and temperament that have led many leading conservative-leaning publications to withhold their endorsements.

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Many of Trump’s recent problems can be traced to his uneven performance in the first presidential debate, which most viewers nationwide and 61% of those surveyed in the Free Press poll believed Clinton won, hitting him repeatedly on questions of temperament and judgment in a format far from the more freewheeling affairs he occasionally dominated during the Republican primary season.

But even after that, Trump had a series of setbacks: continuing a feud with a former Miss Universe he was accused of having criticized for gaining weight; a middle-of-the-night series of tweets blasting journalists and others that raised questions about his judgment, and a report in the New York Times that indicated Trump, who has not released his federal income taxes, legally may not have paid taxes for more than a decade because of a business loss of more than $900 million in the 1990s.

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Abandoning what had been seen as a more disciplined attitude on the campaign trail, Trump suggested that the Democratic nominee may not be “loyal” to her husband, former President Bill Clinton. Trump had already said he might touch on accusations and instances of infidelity involving Bill Clinton — and his wife’s responses to those — in future debates, including the one set for 9 p.m. Sunday.

"I find him (Trump) completely offensive," said Mary Beth Morabito, a 53-year-old homemaker in Novi, who described herself as an independent and voted for Ohio Gov. John Kasich in the March Republican primary. "He does not represent the America that I believe in."

In three weeks since the last EPIC-MRA poll, Trump’s unfavorable ratings rose from 63% to 66% while Clinton’s number fell from 56% to 52%. It doesn’t hurt that her surrogates — President Barack Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, Sanders and Bill Clinton — all have favorability ratings of 50% or higher.

Clinton's unfavorable ratings remain a cause for concern, however, as some voters question her trustworthiness. In St. Joseph in southwestern Michigan, Jess Mutschler, a 49-year-old electrical engineer, said he's backing Trump mostly as a vote against Clinton and her record.

"I think there's a legacy of bad choices (on her part)," he said. "I think a lot of the things she did as secretary of state were questionable, (including) the way she handled the Benghazi incident (in which four Americans died in Libya) and the nuclear deal with Iran."

Her standing with some voters aside, the poll showed clear momentum for Clinton heading into the home stretch among increasingly important demographic groups in Michigan, however.

For instance, a month ago, as questions about her health dogged her as she went off the campaign trail briefly due to a bout of pneumonia, Clinton’s support among black voters in Michigan dropped to 74% — far below the 95% of support the last Democratic nominee, Obama, got in the last election — and 14% undecided. But this poll showed 86% of black voters supporting her and Trump getting no more than 2% of that vote, despite his outreach in visits to Detroit and Flint. Only 5% of African-American voters remained undecided, the poll said.

Trump’s chances of winning in Michigan and elsewhere are further hurt by an inability to attract more support from white people, as well: The poll indicated that Clinton was essentially tied among whites, with her leading 37%-36, compared to 11% for Johnson and 13% undecided. In the last election, exit polls showed Republican nominee Mitt Romney beating Obama among whites in Michigan by 11 percentage points — and still losing by 9 percentage points overall in the state

Three weeks ago, Trump also had taken a clear step toward neutralizing the gender gap facing his campaign, taking a 5-percentage-point lead among men in Michigan and cutting Clinton’s clear lead among women to 10 percentage points.

In this poll, however — following Clinton’s debate where she blasted Trump for calling 1996 Miss Universe Alicia Machado “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping” — Clinton had staked a 20-percentage-point margin with women — 48%-28% among the biggest single voting bloc in the state. She has continued to raise issues of Trump criticizing women over their looks on the campaign trail.

And while Clinton had seen a decline in support among voters ages 18-34 in the last Michigan poll, she’s now back where she was with them post-convention, with a 44%-22% lead over Trump and Johnson getting 21%. Clinton also held leads among every other age demographic. In vote-rich metro Detroit, Clinton’s support was back over 50%: She led Trump in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties as a bloc by 55%-25%, though Trump still held leads in central, west and northern Michigan.

Trump had been expected to do best with voters with a high school diploma or less education, but after he held a 4-percentage-point edge with those voters last month, Clinton is now ahead. She had regained a clear lead, 41%-32%. She also reclaimed a lead among self-described independent voters, 27%-24%, though what may be most significant about that group is that their number of undecideds jumped from 20% to 31%; and their support for Johnson dropped, from 23% to 14%, as the third-party nominee had difficulties identifying the war-torn city of Aleppo in Syria and answering a question about foreign leaders.

Clinton's supporters also seemed more motivated as the election approached: While slightly more than half of those surveyed rated their enthusiasm about voting as high (7 or above on a scale of 1 to 10), Clinton enjoyed the greater support by far of most of those voters.

And while voters who considered international trade deals and national security their top issues tended to favor Trump over Clinton, they made up fewer voters than those caring most about jobs and the economy, improving education and wages — and she did far better than he did with those voters.

Still, if past is prologue, Trump could continue to make a strong play for Michigan: His five trips to the state are far more than other recent Republican nominees, suggesting its importance to his hopes of winning though neither he nor Clinton have spent much money (or in Clinton’s case, any money) on TV ads in Michigan.

Porn, of EPIC-MRA, said all of the evidence from recent polls across the country seems to suggest the race is moving in one direction, however — and it’s not a favorable one for Trump.

“Given that his unfavorables have gone up, it can’t just be the debate. It has to be his overall behavior,” Porn said. “All of these things are turning people off. … It’s significant and it’s consistent to what we’re seeing in other states.”

Contact Todd Spangler: 703-854-8947 or tspangler@freerpress.com. Follow him on Twitter @tsspangler.