With Super Tuesday and Super Saturday in the bag, presidential candidates are setting their sights on the next slate of contests.

For both sides on Tuesday, the biggest prize will be Michigan where front-runners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump hold wide leads, but multiple contenders see the opportunity for an upset.

In the Democratic race, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is coming off a strong weekend where he took three out of the four contests – Kansas, Nebraska and Maine – over former Secretary Clinton. But he lost in the larger Louisiana, and while pledged delegate counts are still being finalized, the best he can hope for on the weekend is a virtual draw and a shot of momentum.

Sanders has been targeting Michigan hard, although the campaign stops short of calling the Great Lakes State a "must- win." But Clinton appears to have a heavy lead headed into Tuesday's primary with its 147 delegates at play.

The current RealClearPolitics average of polls shows Clinton with a 20-point lead on Sanders, with no survey taken there so far this year showing him within single digits of the front-runner.

Courtesy of Real Clear Politics

Sanders' best poll in weeks – a CBS News/YouGov survey showing him trailing Clinton by 11 points, 44 to 55 percent – gives an indication of his difficulty cutting into her lead, even though, on paper, Michigan presents a strong opportunity his campaign.

The state has been hard hit by the shift of manufacturing jobs overseas, a factor many liberals blame on free trade policies like the North American Free Trade Agreement, signed by former President Bill Clinton, and – if President Barack Obama has his way – the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership.

But two of the Michigan representatives who have led the charge against the Trans-Pacific Partnership in Congress, Reps. Debbie Dingell and Dan Kildee, are backing Clinton instead of Sanders, as are both the state's senators and its other three Democratic members of Congress.

Sanders has also struggled to connect with African-Americans, who make up a determinative bloc of the Democratic base. In the contests held so far, Clinton has won over their votes at a 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 pace, helping deliver her lopsided victories in the delegate-rich states in the South.



The CBC News survey shows Clinton dominating among that group in Michigan, with the support of 80 percent of black voters, compared to Sanders' 19 percent. African-Americans make up more than 14 percent of the MIchigan population, according to census data; Clinton has yet to lose in a state where they make up 8 percent of the population or more.

Other polls show Clinton with even broader overall margins. A Fox 2 Detroit/Mitchell poll out Monday gives her a 37-point advantage, an ARG survey from Saturday shows her ahead by 24 points, and the latest from NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll from Sunday shows her up 17 points.

Still, the Sanders campaign has said it hopes it can replicate its come-from-behind climb that nearly delivered him Iowa last month.

"I think that gap is closing," the candidate said at a press conference before Sunday night's debate. "I think we have the momentum, and I hope very much that we can win."

He will have to, if he is to keep his hopes of winning the nomination alive. Even leaving aside the superdelegates who have largely backed her, Clinton has a 673-477 lead among the pledged delegates determined by voting results. The other state holding its Democratic primary Tuesday, Mississippi with its 41 delegates, is expected to go heavily for the front-runner.

Michigan Republicans, meanwhile, have not abandoned their front-runner, Trump, despite signs that he had ceded some ground to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich over the weekend.

While Republicans do not distribute as many delegates there as do their Democratic rivals, Michigan's 59 delegates is still the biggest prize of the four states holding Republican contests on Tuesday. Mississippi, with its 40 delegates, and Idaho, with 32, will also hold primaries and Hawaii, with its 19 delegates, will have caucuses on Tuesday.





Trump leads in polls by an average of 18 points in Michigan, and by 24 points in the only survey taken in Mississippi this year, from late February. He's also ahead in the first Idaho poll of the cycle, released Monday, by 11 points.

One poll taken purely after Thursday night's debate, which devolved into a schoolyard brawl of bathroom insults and shouting, showed the billionaire businessman up 22 points on his rivals, with Kasich trailing at 20 percent and Cruz close behind at 19 percent. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who had a bad Super Tuesday and a worse Super Saturday, is at the bottom, with 9 percent.

But that survey, from Fox 2 Detroit/Mitchell, notes at 5-point decline in Trump's support, at 42 percent, down from 47 percent the day of the debate.

"Trump looks likely to win, 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," said Mitchell Research CEO Steve Mitchell. "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."

Another survey taken after the debate, from ARG, showed a massive uptick in support for Kasich, whose home state has a lot in common with Michigan, making him something of a natural fit there.

ARG's data from Friday and Saturday shows Kasich with 33 percent, above Trump's 31 percent, the first time any of Trump's rivals have topped him in polls taken there this year. Cruz has 15 percent support in the poll, followed by 11 percent for Rubio.

And a Monmouth survey taken Thursday through Sunday showed Trump with an overall advantage of 13 points, but noted that his support narrowed over the four days in the sample, from 39 percent on Thursday and Friday to 32 percent on Saturday and Sunday. In the later half, Trump's lead over Kasich was just 6 points.

The outcome of the Republican primary in the Great Lakes State is the latest test of Trump's rivals' so-far ineffective plans to take him down, or at least keep him from collecting the 1,237 delegates necessary to win the nomination outright.

After Saturday's contests, Trump has 391 delegates to Cruz's 303, Rubio's 152 and Kasich's 37.

Rubio, who swept Puerto Rico's 23 delegates with a massive win there Sunday, has resisted calls from both Trump and Cruz to drop out of the race. He is banking on winning his home state, which gives all of its 99 delegates to the winner, next Tuesday. Kasich hopes to do the same in Ohio, which has 66 delegates.