Michigan Governor According to a new poll, Gretchen Whitmer (D), is now more than 30 points ahead her closest Republican rivals after the overhaul of the GOP candidate field.
Target Insyght conducted the poll and Deadline Detroit published it. Whitmer had a 34-point advantage over Kevin Rinke, real estate broker Ryan Kelley and chiropractor Garrett Soldano. Tudor Dixon, conservative media personality Tudor Dixon and Ralph Rebandt had a 37-point edge.
The poll was conducted from May 26 through May 27, the same time that the State Board of Canvassers voted on May 26 to disqualify half of Republican gubernatorial hopefuls, including the frontrunner, former Detroit Police Chief James Craig for failing to submit valid nominating petitions.
The board found that petition circulators for candidates had submitted at least 68,000 invalid signatures on petitions. It also provided examples of forgeries it had discovered. According to the report:
The Bureau estimates that at least 68,000 invalid signatures were submitted by these circulators across 10 sets nominating petitions. In many cases, invalid signatures submitted to these circulators were the reason that a candidate did not have enough valid signatures. Other cases were different. In some cases, even though invalid signatures were identified by the candidate in his filing, it was not enough to bring the total number of valid signatures below the threshold required for qualification for the ballot.
The board stated that it had no reason to believe any candidates or campaigns knew about the fraudulent-petition circulators’ activities.
The primary field was rocked by the decision to eliminate 50 percent of Republican gubernatorial candidate. Now, the remaining candidates must fight to seperate themselves from a large pool of candidates before the August 2 primary.
According to the poll, despite Whitmer’s current polling, Whitmer had a lower approval rating than the Michigan Democrat among Republicans. This suggests that Michigan Republicans have the potential to overcome this polling deficit.
Whitmer received an “excellent” or “good job rating from 80 percent of Democrats, and 57 percent from independent respondents. However, only 24% of Republicans agreed.
Target Insyght polled 600 voters. For the poll, 43 percent of respondents were Democrat while 39 percent were Republican. 18% were independent. The margin of error for the poll was plus/minus four percentage points.
