LANSING – Election Day is getting closer, but Democratic gubernatorial candidate Virg Bernero still can’t seem to dent Republican Rick Snyder’s huge lead in the polls.

A couple weeks ago, a Bernero campaign internal poll purportedly showed the candidate within 12 points, cutting Snyder’s lead in half. However, leaked internal polling should be taken with a mountain of salt, and that standard seems to have born out with a new poll from Lansing-based EPIC/MRA released Sunday that showed Snyder up, 49 percent to 29 percent.

That’s statistically unchanged from the 53-29 lead he held in EPIC/MRA’s mid-September poll, and the 51-29 lead Snyder had in late August in EPIC/MRA’s surveying.

The poll shows the same trends that have existed since the August primary. Snyder is winning across most geographic areas and demographics. He also has united the Republican base behind him, getting 83 percent among GOP voters to 4 percent of Bernero.

Meanwhile, the malaise among Democratic voters toward Bernero remains. He gets just 68 percent support while Snyder gets 14 percent of Democrats. And Snyder has a 48-14 lead among independents.

And the problem less and less appears to be voters not recognizing Bernero’s name. Some 89 percent of those responding to the polls recognized his name in this survey, up from 81 percent in the EPIC/MRA September poll. But just 27 percent of those queried in the poll had a favorable impression of Bernero compared to 36 percent with an unfavorable impression, numbers that come after weeks of negative advertising against Bernero by the Republican Governors Association.

Negative advertising against Snyder by the Democratic Party has hurt Snyder’s numbers somewhat. Snyder went from a 50 percent favorable/16 percent unfavorable rating in September to a 42-20 split in the new poll.

The poll was conducted October 3-7 and was commissioned by the Detroit Free Press, WXYZ-TV, WOOD-TV, WJRT-TV and WILX-TV. The survey was based on interviews of 600 likely voters and has an error margin of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

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