Joe Biden was down in Michigan. Numbers show Kamala Harris has potential to make gains.

If Vice President Kamala Harris becomes the Democrats' presumptive presidential nominee as all signs pointed to Monday following President Joe Biden stepping aside a day earlier it will reset a campaign they have been losing in Michigan and other battleground states.

It may even give them a chance to win in November, though that is far from certain given the hole the Democratic ticket currently finds itself in against the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump.

She'd make history, though, if she won, becoming the first woman and first Black woman to serve as U.S. president.

"I think it does make it a closer race," said Andrea Bitely, founder of Bitely Communications in Lansing and a consultant who worked with former Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette. "She brings a significant amount of energy to this ticket."

A Free Press poll released Sunday just ahead of Biden's announcement showed the president trailing Trump by 7 percentage points in Michigan, a historically poor showing for a Democratic presidential candidate in a state considered key to that party's chances of winning the Nov. 5 general election.

That same poll — while it didn't test a then-hypothetical matchup between Harris and Trump — did have some encouraging data for her.

Of the 52% of likely voters who thought Biden should step aside as nominee given concerns over his age (81) and his mental acuity following several stumbles and a disastrous debate performance in late June, when, at times, he struggled to form coherent responses, 19% believed Harris should replace him, more than any other potential nominee.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who on Monday endorsed Harris but had been talked about as a possible Democratic replacement for Biden, was the choice of 17% of the voters in that poll who thought Biden should step aside. Asked who would be their second choice, 17% of those Whitmer backers said Harris. Only former first lady Michelle Obama, with 33%, got more support from those voters.

It wasn't universally strong news for Harris: Among self-described Democrats, Harris trailed Whitmer slightly, 28%-26%, as their choice, should Biden be replaced; among independents, it was 19% Whitmer, 18% Harris. Self-described Republicans, however, favored her far more, at 14%, than any other names mentioned, which were all in single digits.

But Harris also did better than the other choices among voters who said they were backing Biden in November, with 30% of their support to Whitmer's 23%, as well as those backing Trump, with 13% to Whitmer's 10%. While white voters overall were split, 17%-17% over Harris or Whitmer as their choice, Black voters in Michigan overwhelmingly picked Harris — the first Black female vice president in history — with 35% of their support to 17% for Obama and 16% for Whitmer.

All of which is to say that voters had already been sufficiently primed to accept Harris as the Democratic nominee if it came to that. Now that it looks as though it likely will — though Democratic delegates still have to vote on that and there could still be challenges mounted against her — we'll have to wait to see what Harris does with it and if the polls begin to move in her favor.

What does other polling tell us about Harris?

Recent national polling of a head-to-head matchup between Harris and Trump has given Trump a slight edge: An average of polls calculated by Real Clear Politics, an online website, showed Trump leading by slightly under 2 percentage points.

The most recent national poll between them, released last week by CBS News, had encouraging news for Harris, however. In it, she trailed Trump nationally 51%-48% but that was better than Biden's margin; he trailed Trump 52%-47%.

Even less polling of a matchup between Harris and Trump has been done in Michigan, though one poll, commissioned by Rust Belt Rising, a Democratic group, which was done this month showed the race a tie.

What's clear, however, is that any polling done prior to Sunday's bombshell announcement is likely to change significantly if Harris becomes the sole focal point of the Democratic campaign and if the Democratic Party coalesces around her.

She could also see those numbers change somewhat if she becomes the nominee, depending on who she selects as a running mate. That decision doesn't usually change the polling data a lot but in a race with a late-breaking nominee, it could make a difference.

What are Harris' strengths?

The qualities Harris brings to the race in her advantage are considerable. First, she is clearly the most likely candidate to give the Democratic Party a consensus nominee and ward off a potentially fractious battle at the convention next month in Chicago. And that isn't nothing: There is a reason parties like to have their nominations locked up in advance to avoid floor fights that can damage a candidate later and make a party appear in disarray.

In Michigan, Harris has already locked up endorsements by almost every top Democrat, including Whitmer (meaning she won't be a rival, at least not this year) and the party's two sitting U.S. senators and six of its seven U.S. House members. Only one — U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Detroit — has withheld her endorsement, saying she first wants to speak to Harris about pushing for a permanent Israeli cease-fire in Gaza, more "fair and humane" immigration policies and plans for a "clear path to ending fossil fuel subsidies."

On that first issue — the ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip — Harris also could bring Democrats a chance to win back some support among younger voters and Muslim and Arab American communities in Michigan that had broken with Biden over his support of Israel, even as he tried to broker a cease-fire. In the past Harris has spoken with sympathy about conditions in Gaza during the conflict.

Arab American leaders told the Free Press on Sunday they were pleased that Biden was stepping aside and hoped Harris would take a more pro-Gaza stance.

A former U.S. senator, prosecutor and attorney general in California, Harris also robs the Republicans of what had been their best line of attack against Biden: the question of whether he was fit to be president. Harris is 59 and an effective public speaker. If anything, it could put the focus on Trump's age — he's 78 and would be slightly older than Biden, the oldest president ever, on Inauguration Day next year if he wins.

"Kamala Harris automatically addresses all of the concerns people had with (Biden) because of his age and you've got a 59-year-old woman who can appeal to a lot of other demographic groups," said Bernie Porn, the pollster with EPIC-MRA of Lansing, which did the poll for the Free Press. "Republicans may have forgotten the fact that now the old guy in the race is Donald Trump."

Harris also brings the possibility of reinvigorating voters who appeared to be abandoning Biden not necessarily to vote for Trump but looking at third-party candidates or not voting at all. In a poll before the debate, EPIC-MRA found Trump leading in a head-to-head matchup with Biden by 49%-45%. In the most recent poll, Trump's number hadn't moved but Biden's fell 3 points, to 42%.

"One of the Democrats' biggest problems going into the fall was were they (their voters) going to vote, would they even show up," said Bitely. "Having Harris leading the Democratic ticket changes that. ... It's a huge change."

What are Harris' weaknesses?

The vice president is still part of the Biden administration and Biden, for his part, says he will serve out the remainder of his term. That in itself could and likely will create some tensions, particularly if he takes a stance or action that Harris the vice president would be quick to defend but Harris the nominee might see as politically damaging.

Holding her tongue in such cases, as vice presidents often understandably do to toe the administration line, could also sink her with swing state voters.

Then there is the fact that she is and has been a member of an administration that Republicans have branded as bad for the American people. Despite enormous job gains and wage hikes since the COVID-19 shutdowns, inflation remains the top issue for 31% of Michigan voters, according to the Free Press' most recent poll. Illegal immigration was next, the top concern of 17% of voters.

Those are both issues Republicans will continue to hammer against Harris, though she may be more able than Biden to make the counter cases that inflation is down significantly from its peak, immigration encounters have dropped since the administration put in place asylum restrictions, and that it was Trump and Republicans who walked away from bipartisan legislation aimed at reforming border security in such a way as to combat illegal immigration.

"Her presidential run shouldn’t necessarily give anyone a ton of confidence," said David Dulio, director of the Center for Civic Engagement at Oakland University in Rochester and a political science professor. "She’s got the Biden agenda she has to defend, she’s got terrible approval numbers. ... I think the Trump campaign would have preferred to run against Biden but they’re prepared to run against Harris."

Those approval numbers have been improving somewhat, however, even as Biden's have worsened. According to the website FiveThirtyEight.com, which compiles an average of job approval ratings from polls, in January of this year, 56% of those surveyed disapproved of Harris' job performance, compared with 37% who approved. As of last week, it was 50% disapproving and 39% approving.

It's a slightly different question since he's not in office, but 54% of voters surveyed had an unfavorable view of Trump in the most recent average, compared with 42% with a favorable view.

Finally, Dulio said Democrats should not be heartened by Harris' campaign history, noting that she ran a lackluster presidential effort in 2020, ably going after Biden in one debate in 2019 for defending segregationist officeholders he worked with in the U.S. Senate before largely fading from view. She dropped out of the race before the Iowa caucuses in 2020.

In the last two days, Harris has clearly run an effective effort to quash any effort to deny her the nomination, suggesting she's up for the run. It will remain to be seen whether she can close the gap with Trump on the campaign trail in Michigan.

"I think the word that is appropriate is 'opportunity,' " Dulio said. "She's got to give people a reason to vote for her."

Contact Todd Spangler: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @tsspangler.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: How Kamala Harris may perform in Michigan