Our conversation with Chad Livengood, political reporter for The Detroit News.
For both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the long and winding campaign road ends in Michigan.
Hillary Clinton will be at Grand Valley State in West Michigan this afternoon and Donald Trump, with Governor Mike Pence, will wrap up his campaign with a rally at 11 p.m. tonight in downtown Grand Rapids.
Earlier today, President Obama held a rally for Hillary Clinton in Ann Arbor, Governor Mike Pence campaigned in Traverse City, and Ivanka and Tiffany Trump campaigned in Hudsonville.
On Sunday, former President Bill Clinton visited churches in Flint, while Donald Trump held a rally for some 8,000 people in Sterling Heights.
Chad Livengood, political reporter for The Detroit News, joined Stateside to help explain what all this attention means.
Livengood said Donald Trump needs to win Michigan, in addition to other large swing states like Florida, North Carolina and Ohio.
“He needs to take a blue state, and Michigan has been blue every year since Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992,” Livengood said. “This is his battleground and this is the wall – the firewall – for the Clinton's, and they are here in force.”
The attention Michigan's getting from both camps suggests public polls are different from private, internal campaign polls.
Those polls, Livengood said, are showing a closer race.
He said public polling shows a race that’s between four and seven percent in Clinton’s favor. The campaigns are looking at tracking polls that show a range of two or three percent.
“If you get under four percent, you’re within the margin of error,” Livengood said.
For these reasons, he said in Michigan the election is a “turnout game” now.
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