Three weeks after it looked like Donald Trump could challenge Hillary Clinton in Michigan, it now appears the Republican nominee may have squandered that chance with a poor debate performance, revelations about his taxes and erratic behavior on the campaign trail,an exclusive new Detroit Free Press/WXYZ-TV poll shows.
The poll showed Clinton regaining an 11-percentage-point lead over Trump, 43%-32%, and clawing back levels of support among key voting blocs including women, African Americans and millennials. It came less than a month after a more disciplined Trump had closed the gap to 3 points in Michigan, which hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential nominee since 1988.
Now, with less than five weeks until the Nov. 8 election, Trump may have a tough time trying to take back the momentum in a key battleground state; with his already high negative ratings climbing even higher and segments of the public he was counting on to win —  men and voters with a high school diploma or less education —  not backing him as strongly as was expected, at least not for now.
“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 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.”
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.
The Michigan poll —  for which 600 likely voters were surveyed from Saturday through Monday and which has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points —  showed Clinton staking out the same 11-percentage-point lead over Trump she had following her party’s nomination convention in Philadelphia in July. More troubling for Trump, it continues a recent string of poll results that show him losing ground nationally and in battleground states including Florida, Colorado, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and others.
In a two-person race, the poll showed Clinton with a 10-percentage-point —  46%-36% —  lead 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. In September, Trump had cut Clinton's lead in Michigan to 38%-35%.
For more on the poll, see the Detroit Free Press.
MICHIGAN PRESIDENT RACE RATING
View Outlook
via Rothenberg & Gonzales | updated Oct 1, 2016
FAVORED DEMOCRATIC
Safe Democratic
 T ossup 
Safe Republican
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