Michigan was always meant to be Mitt Romney’s to lose, and he may be poised to do just that.

Two fresh polls suggest Rick Santorum, fueled by a trifecta of wins in Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota, has surpassed Romney in Michigan, raising the spectre of a humiliating defeat on his home turf in the upcoming Feb. 28th primary.

The Republican front-runner was born in Detroit, raised in one of its affluent suburbs, Bloomfield Hills, and attended Cranbrook Academy, an elite prep school. His father, George Romney, built his fortune as president of American Motors in the fifties and went on to serve as governor, presiding over the state with such esteem that even after he imposed Michigan’s first income tax, he emerged more popular than ever. Mr. Romney himself handily won the Michigan primaries in 2008 trouncing his chief rival, John McCain, by an easy nine points.

The new numbers, however, suggest Mr. Romney will face a much tougher battle this time around. Michigan was already in recession when the rest of the country plunged into a downturn. Waves of layoffs swelled the ranks of the unemployed and record foreclosures transformed some sections of Detroit into ghost towns.

Enter Romney. Viewed in a certain light, the candidate’s Michigan roots, business background and reputation as a turnaround artist could have resonated in this woe-begotten state. Instead, he is entering the race as the underdog, his privilege and inability to connect proving a curse, even in his home state. A controversial op-ed piece he wrote four years ago, in which he advocated letting the auto industry go bankrupt, likely won’t endear him to locals with long memories.

If the polls’ predictions play out in the Michigan primary, it would suggest Santorum has out-strategized Romney by stressing his blue-collar roots and hitting all the right notes in working-class states. It also implies Romney’s ties to Michigan are perhaps too stale to matter (his father left office in 1969, when Richard Nixon was president), or that Romney’s vaunted Michigan connections simply matter to the wrong people.