Politics

Battleground Michigan

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

October 30, 2000 / 8:52 AM EST / CBS

Earlier this year, it seemed Al Gore could count on this Midwest battleground state and its 18 electoral votes. After all, his boss carried the state twice by margins higher than the national average.

But the vice president’s lead has slipped to a razor thin margin in the past couple of months, adding credence to the belief of political observers in Michigan that their state's voters mirror those across the country. And right now, many of those voters remain undecided and confused.

A poll by the independent firm EPIC/MRA for the Detroit Free Press released on Thursday shows Gore leading Texas Governor George W. Bush by 44-42 percent. A week ago, the same poll showed their numbers dead even.

Ed Sarpolus, who conducted the two surveys, says the most interesting finding is that two weeks before the election, the number of undecided voters has increased to 11 percent.

"Things are happening really quick now … and there’s a sense they’re getting confused over whom to pick," he says. But he adds that uncertainty is normal considering that voters here are being bombarded with ever-changing campaign ads about the presidential race. "There’s been so much thrown at them since the debates."

The vice president would likely benefit if those ads and candidate visits overshadowed the memory of the debates, according to Sarpolus, who believes they hurt Gore. The pollster’s numbers indicate Democrat’s favorability ratings took a nosedive after the first two meetings between the candidates.

So while Gore appears to be winning more supporters based on his policy proposals, he is losing what Sarpolus sees as a popularity contest, which will ultimately result in voters siding with the man – and the party – they feel most comfortable with.

In Michigan, the two parties share political control at the state and federal level. The GOP controls the governorship, both houses of the state legislature and one U.S. Senate seat. The Democrats have the other Senate seat as well as a 10-6 advantage in the state's congressional delegation.

David Rhode, a political scientist at Michigan State University, believes Bush’s pledge to be bipartisan may be one of his biggest assets.

"It’s clear that the center of the electorate doesn’t like partisanship," he says.

Rhode believes the state will turn on suburban voters, moderates and voters who don’t vote along strict party lines, or "ticket splitters," of which the state has many.

Michigan voters are not required to register to vote by party affiliation, and are said to pride themselves on their ability to "roam the ballot at will," as one observer put it.

Craig Ruff, the president of Public Sector Consultants, a public policy think tank in Lansing, also points to white, married women as a group of voters still largely on the fence this election year. "They are besieged" with messges appealing to their concerns as caregivers, and their conflicting worries over the environment and the auto industry, says Ruff, and "they’re not quite sure where their fulcrum is in making these decisions." They are also more likely to bring up the character issue and Gore’s association to the Clinton scandal than other groups of voters.

As in every swing state, voter turnout will be key in Michigan. The state’s unions, particularly the United Auto Workers, have amassed a large get-out-the vote effort. "They are turning up the volume in ways I have never seen before," says Ruff.

But the true test may come in urban areas like Detroit, where the Democrats are struggling to energize African American voters.

A ballot initiative for the state to offer vouchers to parents in Michigan’s poorest school districts could also impact turnout, since it will likely draw more Catholics to the polls. And there are conflicting views over whether supporters of Arizona Senator John McCain, who won the state’s republican primary last spring, will play a decisive role in a close election.

But ultimately, voters may be driven—or not driven—to vote because of a sense of satisfaction about how the country as a whole is going. In the EPIC/MRA poll, 58 percent of voters said they felt country is going in the right direction.

That leads Sarpolus and others to wonder just how many of those undecideds will bother to vote at all.