GOP presidential hopefuls are beating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in polls as the competition in the 2016 elections continues to heighten.

Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is leading Clinton by 9 percent in the latest Mitchell-FOX 2 Michigan polls, while former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and businessman Donald Trump have a narrow 1-percent lead over the former first lady.

The Republican presidential candidates lead among white voters while Clinton leads with non-white voters. Fourteen percent of the voters supporting Clinton came from African-Americans.

While Trump has been receiving strong support from Republicans, he was behind Rubio and Bush among staunch Republican voters. At the same time, Rubio and Trump leads with the key independent voters by 20 percent. Speculation is that Trump will run as an independent if he does not win the Republican candidate ticket.

"There are several important pieces of information in this poll: First, Hillary Clinton's negative publicity has hurt her with Democrats, independents, women and younger voters. Second, the new face of Marco Rubio is much stronger at this point than either the new face of Donald Trump or the old name of Jeb Bush," Steve Mitchell, president of Mitchell Research & Communications said.

"Third, Trump is for real as a presidential candidate, he is polling as well as Jeb Bush, the brother and son of a Republican president and clearly the establishment candidate in Michigan."

He adds that Rubio is the strongest with younger voters between the ages of 18 and 39 while Trump is winning the hearts of people between the ages of 40 and 49.

"Just as we saw with gender, party affiliation, and age, there are big differences in the path Republicans can take to try to win Michigan. One thing is very clear; at this time Hillary Clinton is a weakened candidate," Mitchell said.

Clinton was viewed overall as the most likely candidate to win the presidential bid at the start of the race. Will this change soon?

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