Clinton, Trump maintain large leads ahead of debates, primary

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We're less than a week away from the Michigan Primary and Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are still holding on to their sizable leads in the FOX 2 Detroit/Mitchell Poll.

With Michiganders heading to the voting booth on Tuesday, the exclusive poll is showing both with very large leads. Trump has 39% of the vote, compared to Marco Rubio (19%), Ted Cruz (14%), and John Kasich (12%) with 7% undecided.

On the Democratic side of the ticket, Bernie Sanders has made up some ground on the former Secretary of State but he still has to make up 28% of the vote if he wants to catch Clinton in Michigan. She has 61% to his 33% and 5% undecided.

The survey was conducted on March 1, before Ben Carson dropped out of Thursday's GOP debate. Steve Mitchell, CEO of Mitchell Research & Communications, said that if Carson were to drop out of the race, the other candidates not named Trump will get a bump.

"Since we asked voters their second choice, we can get an idea as to who might benefit from Carson’s decision. Rubio would get 29%, Kasich 22%, Cruz 24%, and Trump 9% of Carson’s vote,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell said that on the other side, Sanders is outspending Clinton but it may not matter.

“Hillary Clinton continues to lead Bernie Sanders by a large margin (61%-33%) after her victory in the South Carolina Primary.  But, with Sanders spending more on ad-buys in Michigan, he has closed the gap by 6% since last week.  Clinton still seems poised to win a big victory in Michigan next Tuesday,” he said.

The Republican survey of 679 likely voters has a margin of error of +/- 3.76%. The Democratic survey of 427 voters has a margin of error of +/- 4.74%