A new poll shows both Democratic White House hopefuls Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders with substantial leads in matchups with US President DonaldTrump in Michigan, one of the Rust Belt states key to his 2016 electoral college victory.
Biden, the former Vice-President, and Sanders, a senator from Vermont, led Trump by identical margins - 53 per cent to 41 per cent - among likely voters in the poll conducted for the Detroit News and the Detroit television station WDIV-TV.
Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, also led Trump in a hypothetical matchup by a smaller margin of 6 percentage points. Two other Democrats - senators Kamala Harris of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts - had leads that were within the poll's margin of error.
In 2016, Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in Michigan by less than a quarter of a percentage point, picking up the state's 16 electoral votes. Trump was the first Republican presidential candidate to carry Michigan since George H.W. Bush in 1988.
In an interview last month, Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale cited Michigan as a state key to the President's 2020 prospects.
