NEW: GOP House Candidate Leads In Dem Senate Candidate’s District

A new poll shows Republican congressional candidate Tom Barrett leading his Democrat opponent Curtis Hertel in Michigan’s 7th Congressional District. The seat is currently held by U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), who is currently running for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat.

The new survey, which was conduced by Emerson College, found Barrett leading Hertel with 47 percent of the vote to 45 percent. Libertarian candidate L. Rachel Daily polled at one percent, while a sizable number of voters remain undecided at seven percent.

“Barrett has an advantage among independent voters in the district, who back him 47 percent over Hertel’s 41 percent, though 10 percent of independents are still undecided ahead of the election,” Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling said in the poll’s write-up.

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📊 MI-7 POLL: Emerson/The Hill

🟥 Tom Barrett: 47%
🟦 Curtis Hertel: 45%

MI-7 (Pres) – 🟡 Tie 49-49%
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#10 (2.9/3.0) | 10/24-26 | 535 LV | ±4.2%https://t.co/kUugpaHuhi pic.twitter.com/flq1Q6w61H

— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) October 30, 2024

Emerson further found that former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are tied in the district at 49 percent each. “Men and women voters in the district break in opposite directions: men for Trump 58% to 41%, and women for Harris, 57% to 41%,” Kimball said.

Top issues for voters in Michigan’s 7th Congressional District include the economy at 46 percent, followed by threats to democracy at 20 percent, housing affordability at 8 percent, immigration at 7 percent, abortion access at 6 percent and education at 5 percent.

Rep. Slotkin — a former CIA employee who has served in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2019 — is currently locked in a neck-and-neck race with U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) in Michigan’s U.S. Senate race. The seat is open after longtime Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) announced in January 2023 that she will be retiring at the end of her term.

Slotkin has led for the majority of the campaign cycle, according to most pollsters and the RealClearPolitics polling average, though polls have tightened in recent weeks. A recent poll from Atlas Intel — one of the most accurate pollsters for the 2020 Election — found Rogers leading with 49.3 percent of the vote compared to 43.6 percent for Slotkin. More than five percent of voters indicated that they were still undecided, however.

In a late September meeting with donors, Slotkin shared that her campaign’s internal polling had Harris underwater in what is widely viewed as a must-win swing state for Democrats. “This is… I’m not feeling my best, right now, about where we are, and Kamala Harris in a place like Michigan right now,” the House Democrat said in the leaked clip. “We have her underwater in our polling.”

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