Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-Mich.) warned her party about getting overly enthusiastic about Vice President Kamala Harris’ lead in the polls, declaring, "It's just not true.”
Several polls, including a recent CNN survey, show Harris in the lead against former President Donald Trump by nearly five percentage points. While Democrats have been quick to gloat, Whitmer said the numbers make her “nervous.”
“It makes me nervous to see any poll that says there's a five-point lead for Kamala Harris in Michigan now. It's just not true,” the governor said. “It's gonna be a very close race. I believe we can win it. And I believe we wlll, but it's gonna be very close.”
According to the CNN poll, Harris has a 48 percent advantage over Trump’s 43 percent in Michigan, while the VP leads 50 percent to Trump’s 44 percent in Wisconsin.
Whitmer pointed out that in Michigan, there are three other people on the ballot— Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein. The poll failed to consider that these candidates, despite RFK Jr. resigning from the race, affected the election outcome.
The Democrat governor warned Harris fans not to get comfortable with the poll results and wait to pop the champagne, pointing out that in 2016, twice-failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton lost to Trump by 11,000 votes.
“Jill Stein was also on our ballot and earned more than 11,000 votes,” Whitmer reminded people.
Despite only receiving four percent of the vote in the poll, RFK Jr. has been polling the highest in states where his name is still on the ballot. After announcing the suspension of his campaign, Kennedy suggested he would fight to remove his name from red state ballots so he wouldn’t take any votes away from Trump but keep his name on blue state ballots in hopes of taking votes away from Harris.
Speaking on the fact that Michigan is a swing state, Whitmer also cautioned that the state has a solid chance of turning red, pointing out that there have been Republican and Democrat leaders.
“In Michigan over my lifetime, we take big swings. We’ve had 12 years of a Republican governor, and then we have term limits, so eight years of a Democrat, then eight years of a Republican, then eight years of a Democrat,” she explained. “So it is a state that is notoriously kind of independent. We split our ticket a lot. And that’s who we are in Michigan.”
In 2020, a RealClearPolitics survey 2020 predicted President Joe Biden would defeat Trump in Michigan by more than four percentage points. However, he ended up winning by less than three. Again, in 2016, the same polling outlet showed Clinton in the lead by four points in the state, but ultimately, Trump won by 0.3 points.