…Maybe.
The most important thing to take away from this highly preliminary and definitely partisan poll is that it shows Senator Debbie Stabenow’s (D, MI) numbers being below 50%. This is somewhat surprising, given that she did not have a particularly hard time of it in 2006; then again, 2006 was a bad year for a Republican to be challenging a Democratic incumbent (to put it mildly). However, since 2006 the unemployment rate has more or less doubled (just like everywhere else, really); if Stabenow had been up for election last year she would probably have been thrown out of office alongside a good number of her fellow Democrats. If she wants to survive 2012 Stabenow had better start hoping that the economy improves*.
H/T Taegan Goddard, whose comment section is by the way being highly entertaining in its Democratic members’ inability to grasp that Michigan is the state where the GOP just swept the executive branch, cemented its control over the state Senate, flipped the State House, and now has a majority of federal Congressional seats. It’s not enemy territory for Democrats. Yet. But it’s certainly at least not under their control, which will be… interesting for an administration that may be perhaps not experienced in adjusting their campaigning style to reflect reduced resources.
*I think that we have had it demonstrated by now that federal Democrats are singularly inept at making the economy improve.
I live hear in MI and democrat control in this state is not as total and in your face as it is in Illinois. But this is just my personal observation. I see it as tough but do able.