MI-Baldwin Wallace: Peters +5

[GALeftist]

Peters at 42 and 46 in the last two polls. Awful numbers for an incumbent. It seems like James is running about 1-2% ahead of  Trump in MI. This race is def tilt R at this point. Peters is a very weak incumbent. I could see a decent number of Oakland County Biden James voters.

Trump isn't even at 46% in most Rust Belt states and Arizona on average. So you acknowledge he's doomed?

Hell, Trump's barely cracking 46 in Texas.

[GALeftist]

Anyways, I'm inclined to believe that this is lean D, closer to tilt than likely, although I could see that going whichever way pretty quickly. On the one hand, Peters does not seem like an especially compelling candidate, and he's certainly far less entrenched than Stabenow, who James performed admirably against. On the other hand, Peters has a built in advantage in that he can expect relatively high turnout (I'd wager that there will be a bump of at least 5 points from 2018, and Peters will get the lion's share of those votes). Also, I think people make too big a deal of the "muh closest senate race since 2000" on here. If we go through the senate elections that have even happened in Michigan since 2000, the only ones that weren't in D wave years were 2002 (with Carl Levin seeking his fifth term– 100% entrenched) arguably 2012 (where Stabenow's opponent Pete Hoekstra literally ran an ad with a racist depiction of an Asian woman credited as "yellowgirl") and 2014 (Where Land, Peters's opponent, threw her campaign about as hard as you even can). I get that 2018 was a D wavy year too, but it does sort of make sense that it would be close relative to those elections plus 2006 and 2008.