-Debbie Stabenow continues to look like a pretty strong favorite for reelection to the Senate. She's up double digits on both of her top Republican opponents- 52/38 over Pete Hoekstra and 51/34 over Clark Durant. Stabenow's benefiting from an incredibly unified party base, getting 89-90% of the Democratic vote, and she's up by 17-19 points with independents in the two match ups.
Stabenow's approval numbers aren't great, with 44% of voters approving of her to 41% who disapprove. But the Republican candidate field isn't terribly strong. Hoekstra is pretty well known but also pretty unpopular, with 28% of voters rating him favorably to 37% with a negative opinion. Durant is still largely unknown, with 61% of voters saying they don't know enough to rate him one way or the other.
Hoekstra remains the overwhelming favorite in the Republican primary, polling at 51% to 17% for Clark Durant, 4% for Randy Hekman, and 1% for Peter Konetchy. Those numbers are little changed from our last poll in May, which also found Hoekstra leading by a margin over 30 points. Hoekstra doesn't look to have anything to worry about on the right- he's up by an even wider 56/19 margin with voters describing themselves as 'very conservative.'
-Rick Snyder's seen some significant improvement in his poll numbers over the last few months. Voters are now almost evenly divided on him with 42% approving and 44% disapproving. That's up a net 13 points from May when he was at 37/52. Most of the improvement has come with independent voters, who have gone from disapproving of him 37/50 to approving of him 46/41. Snyder would lead a generic Democratic opponent 42/40 if the election was today.
Snyder nevertheless could find himself with a more difficult legislature to work with next year. Democrats lead the generic legislative ballot in the state by a 45/37 margin, numbers that could translate into them regaining control of the State House.
We looked at several issues that could be on the ballot in the state this fall or sometime in the future and found good news for each party:
-Democrats will like the 44/34 support for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to collective bargaining, and the 50/30 support for an initiative mandating that 25% of Michigan's electricity come from renewable sources by 2025.
-Republicans will like the 40/33 support for an initiative requiring either a statewide vote or 2/3rds support in the legislature for any increase in state taxes and the 41/31 support for keeping the state's emergency managers law, which was initially very unpopular.
Full results here
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