Battlegrounders
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MICHIGAN: THE NUMBERS [Henry Payne 10/23 05:57 PM]

More Michigan poll numbers rolled in Friday showing both Bush and Kerry leading in the race for this battleground sate.

Lansing-based EPIC/MRA, in its poll for Detroit TV-station WXYZ, shows Kerry with 49 percent with Bush trailing at 43 percent. The poll, conducted Monday through Thursday, gives Nader 1 percent, while 6 percent say they’re undecided. The survey of 610 likely Michigan voters has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. (A Sept. 15-19 poll by EPIC/MRA had the race at 48 percent for Kerry, 44 percent for Bush, 3 percent for Nader.)

Meanwhile, an expended poll of 600 likely voters conducted for The Detroit News by Mitchell Research showed Bush leading in the state for the first time since the summer, 46 percent-43 percent (the same tracking poll of 400 voters had earlier put Bush up 47-42). Ralph Nader polled once percent, with 10 percent undecided. The poll was conducted Monday through Wednesday and had a 4-point margin of error.

It’s worth noting that Mitchell was the only polling firm to predict the correct Michigan margin for Al Gore in 2000.

Kerry had consistently led by as much as eight points this summer, but a poll conducted in early October by Knight Ridder/MSNBC had first warned of trouble for Kerry voters when it found the senator’s support slipping to 47 percent vs. 46 percent for Bush.

Nevertheless, EPIC/MRA’s Ed Sarpolus said his latest poll shows Kerry is picking up ground among older women who had remained undecided in his earlier polls.

“Women over 60 are starting to come home,” said Sarpolus. “Kerry is talking their issues: health care, and here in Michigan, economy and jobs. That’s starting to show up in west Michigan, because President Bush, while winning in west Michigan, is not winning by enough to offset southeast Michigan.”

Sarpolus said Bush is doing better in Macomb County, while Kerry is doing better in Oakland County, Detroit and outer Wayne County.