Republicans have a shot at a Michigan Senate seat that Democrats have held since 1979, and three weeks before Election Day on November 3 the race between former Representative Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed is close.
The seat is open because Democratic Senator Gary Peters decided not to seek a third term. Democrats have held it since Carl Levin defeated Republican Senator Robert Griffin in 1978. Levin served for 36 years before Peters succeeded him in 2015.
A Rogers victory would also end a longer losing streak for Republicans. The party has not won a Senate race in Michigan since 1994, when Spencer Abraham captured the state's other seat in the upper chamber of Congress.
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El-Sayed holds a slight lead in polls released this month, mostly within the margin of error. The Cook Political Report rates the race a Toss-Up, and strategists in both parties count it among the handful of contests likely to determine who controls the chamber in January.
Rogers came within 20,000 votes of beating now-Senator Elissa Slotkin in 2024. He had no primary opponent this time and carries President Donald Trump's endorsement. El-Sayed, a progressive and former public health official backed by independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, edged Michigan Representative Haley Stevens in the August 4 Democratic primary by less than a percentage point.
Newsweek reached out to the Rogers and El-Sayed campaigns for comment via email on Monday.
Mike Rogers vs. Abdul El-Sayed: Latest Polls
Six polls taken between late September and this past weekend have El-Sayed ahead, from 1 point to 7 percentage points.
The newest, an InsiderAdvantage survey of 1,200 likely voters conducted October 9-10, put El-Sayed at 48 percent and Rogers at 46 percent, with 5 percent undecided.
Wedgewood Polls was in the field the two days prior and gave El-Sayed his best number of the stretch, 53 percent to Rogers' 47 percent among 607 likely voters.
Other recent surveys showed a race inside the margin of error. Quantus Insights found El-Sayed up 48 percent to 47 percent among 744 likely voters polled October 5-6. YouGov, working with a much larger sample of 3,947 likely voters September 22-October 4, also landed on a one-point gap, 49 percent to 48 percent.
Mitchell Research & Communications polled 682 likely voters on October 1 and had El-Sayed at 46 percent to Rogers' 41 percent, with third-party candidates splitting about 7 percent and 6 percent unsure. El-Sayed's biggest lead, 49 percent to 42 percent, came from Z to A Research in a poll sponsored by Rust Belt Rising, a Democratic group.
Summer looked different. A poll taken a week before the primary for the Michigan Education Association and Business Leaders for Michigan had Rogers up 48 percent to 41 percent over El-Sayed among voters certain to cast a ballot, while Stevens led Rogers by 2. Independents broke for Rogers over El-Sayed 47 percent to 19 percent in that survey.
Democrats Have Held Michigan Senate Seat Since 1979
At the presidential level, Michigan bounces around. It went for Trump in 2016 and 2024 and for Joe Biden in 2020. Senate races have been another story, with Democrats winning every one for nearly three decades.
Rogers nearly broke that run two years ago in his loss to Slotkin. Republicans took the result as proof he could win, and Trump, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, and the national party got behind him early, clearing the field.
The Democratic primary handed the GOP a second opening. Stevens had much of the party establishment on her side, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer among them, and El-Sayed's win left a split coalition. Some members of the state's Jewish community have voiced concern over his past remarks on Israel.
National Republicans went straight at it. An ad from the National Republican Senatorial Committee calls El-Sayed the most radical candidate in the country, and the committee has taken to using his full name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed. In a statement released with the ad, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, who chairs the committee, said El-Sayed's record makes him "dangerous and ultimately disqualified from serving."
Trump weighed in on October 7, the night before the candidates' first debate, calling El-Sayed "Mohammed" in a Truth Social post and writing that he "goes back to the days of the Jihad."
"He's not just attacking me. He's attacking all of us," El-Sayed wrote back.
Born in the U.S. to Egyptian immigrant parents, he also noted that the president clearly knows his name, since he says it every day.
Sanders jumped in on X. With healthcare, groceries, housing and childcare out of reach for so many families, he wrote that "the best they can do is attack Abdul's Muslim faith."
Rogers has spent the past few weeks stepping away from the White House on a couple of big issues. In September, he said the war with Iran (which is now 7 1/2 months old) had to "end quickly." Then, on October 7, his campaign put out an ad going after Trump's tariffs on Canada. "Canada is not our enemy," Rogers said in it.
El-Sayed keeps tying Rogers to Trump, hammering him on prices, housing costs and what the administration's trade fights have done to Michigan's economy.
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Latest Developments in Michigan Senate Race
Rogers and El-Sayed debated for the first time on October 8, at WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids. It got personal fast. The two talked over each other for much of the hour and kept going during a commercial break.
"In 30 years of doing debates, I've never seen it continue during the commercial," moderator Rick Albin said.
On Iran and Canada, Rogers held his ground. After the debate, he told reporters that he had called the White House that week to push for a deal on the tariffs. He went further on immigration, saying the administration's enforcement surge in Minnesota earlier this year, when two protesters were shot and killed, "were probably not appropriate."
Much of the questioning aimed at El-Sayed was about Israel. Would he back sending weapons if another country attacked it? He answered that he did not want U.S. tax dollars going "to subsidize war abroad." A follow-up asked whether Iran or Israel was the bigger threat, and he dismissed it as a "ridiculous question," adding that both had proven dangerous in their own way.
Reporters also pressed him afterward on his ties to Hasan Piker, a streamer with a record of inflammatory comments. Comparing the most powerful man in the world to a streamer in California, El-Sayed said, was "silly."
As his poll numbers have slipped, Rogers has gotten sharper, too. Speaking to conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, he called El-Sayed "the most anti-American candidate in the race, in the country."
Money is on Rogers' side. El-Sayed has been outspent close to 2-to-1 on ads, the Associated Press reported, and is trying to make up for it with a packed travel schedule and interviews everywhere from Fox News to The New York Times. Rogers has kept a lighter public calendar while outside groups pour money into the state for him.
Democratic leaders are starting to close ranks. Whitmer campaigned with El-Sayed on debate day, her first appearance with him since backing Stevens in the primary, and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York will join the campaign this week. Former President Barack Obama is expected to rally in Detroit with El-Sayed and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic nominee for governor, on Saturday.
A second debate is expected before the end of the month.
Why Is Michigan Race Important in 2026 Midterms?
Republicans control the Senate 53-47. Vice President JD Vance breaks ties, so Democrats need a net gain of four seats to take over.
The party has targets. Cook rates Republican-held seats in Maine and Ohio as Toss-Ups and North Carolina as Lean Democratic, and Democrats are also spending in Alaska and Texas.
Michigan is where that math gets harder. It is the most vulnerable seat Democrats are defending this cycle, and losing it would require flipping five Republican seats instead of four.
A Rogers win gives Republicans breathing room. They could drop a couple of races elsewhere and keep the majority, even in a year when the national mood has mostly tilted toward Democrats.
Voters get the final word on November 3. Absentee voting has already started, and early in-person voting opens statewide in Michigan on October 24.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Jenna deJong and Dave Siminoff.