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Democratic challenger Mark Schauer, left, and incumbent Republican Gov. Rick Snyder.
(File Photo | MLive.com)
LANSING, MI — Democratic challenger Mark Schauer holds a two-percentage point lead over Republican Governor Rick Snyder, according to a new EPIC-MRA poll, which shows the race within the margin of error roughly 10 weeks out from the general election.
Snyder has held a consistent polling lead the past 14 months, and while other recent results have suggested a tightening race, the new numbers from EPIC-MRA are the first since June of last year to show Schauer with any type of advantage.
The Lansing-based firm surveyed 600 likely Michigan voters, 20 percent by cell phone, between August 22 and 25. It has a margin of error of plus or minus four points.
Forty-five percent of respondents said they would vote for Schauer or are leaning in that direction, compared to 43 percent for the governor. Twelve percent were undecided or refused to answer.
Schauer and Snyder each held commanding leads among likely voters who identified with their respective parties, but Snyder maintained an 11-point lead among independents, 25 percent of whom remain undecided.
The poll also indicated that Schauer’s struggle with name recognition is fading. Twenty-nine percent of respondents said they did not recognize his name, down 15 points since July.
Of those who did recognize Schauer, 26 percent said they had a favorable opinion of him and 21 percent said unfavorable. For Snyder, 45 percent of respondents held a favorable opinion, compared to 46 percent unfavorable.
Overall job approval ratings for Snyder were relatively low, with 41 percent of respondents giving him an "excellent" or "pretty good" review, compared to 57 percent who said he was doing “just fair” or “poor.”
On the economy, which is expected to be a big issue for voters this fall, 64 percent of respondents said they think Michigan has “already bottomed out and is starting to improve,” which could bode well for Snyder, who regularly references “the comeback state."
Twenty-two percent of respondents said the economy is “at the bottom but is not getting any better” and 11 percent said it has bottomed out “and will still get worse.”
The Schauer campaign celebrated the latest poll results, suggesting that the former Congressmen and state lawmakers has "all the momentum" in the race. EPIC-MRA had Snyder up by three points in July.
“The fact that a universally-known Republican incumbent is still stuck in the mid-40s and losing ground less than 10 weeks from Election Day is a really bad sign for Snyder,” said campaign spokesperson Cathy Bacile Cunningham.
“We fully expect the governor’s billionaire backers will spend big money to smear Mark’s record, but Snyder can’t hide the fact that he raised taxes on seniors and gave his staff huge pay raises.”
Real Clear Politics, which averages polls to paint a broad picture rather than a single snapshot, pegged Snyder's lead at 3.5 percentage points before the latest EPIC-MRA results were released.
The Snyder campaign, which dismissed the EPIC-MRA poll as on outlier, also noted the results of a recent internal poll conducted on behalf of U.S. Senate candidate Terri Lynn Land and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
"One out of every ten polls is garbage and this is certainly an example of one,” said Snyder spokesperson Emily Benavides.
“Every poll in this race has shown the Governor with an average lead of four points and the most recent one showed him with a nine point advantage because Michigan is coming back and Governor Snyder is leading the way."
Schauer began airing his first official campaign commercial this month, but he’s also benefited from numerous TV ads paid for by the Democratic Governors Association.
Snyder, who held a significant cash advantage over Schauer as of late July, will return to the airwaves next week after the Labor Day weekend. He, too, has benefited from ads run by the Republican Governors Association.
Editor's note: This story was updated to reflect Snyder's 11-point lead amongst independents, which was erroneously reported as just a five-point margin. Results of an additional poll question about job approval ratings were added.
Jonathan Oosting is a Capitol reporter for MLive Media Group. Email him, find him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter.