This whole conversation is incredibly moot since Rick Snyder will not win reelection in 2014.
Yes, he will.
Uh did you see today's PPP poll? It looks REALLY good for Schauer. His name recognition is atrocious yet he ties Snyder, and Snyder's approval rating is absolute garbage. And Snyder's "right to work" law is unpopular. It's Michigan, so undecideds will break Democrat, and like pbrower said, GOTV from big labor as well as a general increase in Schauer's name recognition (and as a result, popularity) will get Schauer over the line.
Have you seen the other recent polls? Snyder is comfortably ahead in those. I'd rather take my numbers from a nonpartisan pollster than the polling arm of the Democratic party.
Uh has a single nonpartisan polling firm addressed this race? So far it's solely been all those weird EPIC MRA and other junk Michigan polling firms that showed Romney up on Obama and such. PPP is incredibly accurate regardless of their partisan affiliation. In fact in 2012 they were on average a point or two more Republican than the real outcome.
It looks like EPIC MRA and the Detriot News were close to the final result in their last polls of the 2010 governor's race in Michigan, based on aggregated data from RealClearPolitics. Both aforementioned pollsters predicted that Snyder would win by 18 points, and he ended up winning by 18.2. Unfortunately, PPP stopped polling this race in September of that year, so we probably can't fairly judge their final poll showing Snyder up by 21 points. My point is that while PPP is a generally accurate polling company, they aren't perfect, and it might not be the best idea to only trust one pollster.
UNH's polling was also fairly accurate for NH, but it wound up swinging wildly from each candidate, sometimes by about 20 points. Which proves my point - you can get an accurate result - but the methodology behind each poll makes it a junk firm.