Michigan voters are casting ballots Tuesday in an open U.S. Senate race between Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, a contest that could help decide which party controls the chamber. The seat opened with the retirement of Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, according to MS NOW. The closing days were upended on Sunday, Nov. 1, when Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens, who narrowly lost the August primary to El-Sayed and had endorsed him afterward, attended services with Rogers at Perfecting Church in Detroit and then endorsed the Republican instead.
The fallout was immediate. Justin German, Stevens’ chief of staff for eight years, said many members of her team had resigned, and Michigan Democratic Party Chair Curtis Hertel wrote that Stevens “is not a current member of the Michigan Democratic Party, nor will she be in the future.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the move “a despicable betrayal.” Stevens told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that endorsing Rogers was “just a weight off my shoulders” and said El-Sayed “has been getting angrier and angrier.” The break followed a fight over an outside group’s ad that linked grocery prices to U.S. aid to Israel; El-Sayed said he did not agree with its contents, and his campaign asked Stevens to stay away from its events. “At the end of the day, I actually don’t think about Haley Stevens,” El-Sayed said Sunday.
The two sides are reading the switch in opposite ways. At a Michigan GOP event Monday, six community leaders representing African Americans and Jews praised the endorsement, Fox News reported, and Rogers thanked Stevens at length at his closing rally. “I believe it’s going to make a big difference that she came out,” Michelle Nard, a former Democrat running for state Senate, told Fox News Digital. Democrats argue the opposite: El-Sayed’s campaign said he raised $2.4 million on Sunday, its biggest fundraising day, and Hillary Clinton told CNN that “if it has any impact, I think that it will end up helping Abdul.” Public polling has favored El-Sayed. CNN’s Poll of Polls average showed him leading Rogers 50% to 45%, and the final New York Times/Siena poll had him ahead 53% to 42%, MS NOW reported. Fox News’ final power ranking still rated the race a toss-up, and some 1.5 million early votes had been cast as of Sunday, according to CNN.
Prediction markets offer a separate read on belief. On Kalshi, the contract for Republicans winning Michigan’s Senate race, which would mean a Rogers victory, traded at 22.5% as of 11:45 a.m. ET on Nov. 3, while the paired Democratic contract was priced near 78.5%. The Republican contract held between roughly 30% and 35% for most of October and has drifted lower since late in the month, including in the days after Stevens’ endorsement. Those prices describe what traders were willing to pay, not a forecast, and they settle nothing while the polls and the race ratings still disagree.
The answer starts to arrive tonight. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday, according to WDIV’s voter guide, and every qualified voter in line at 8 p.m. will be allowed to vote. The returns will show whether Stevens’ last-minute switch moved Black and Jewish Democrats toward Rogers, as Republicans hope, or rallied the party behind El-Sayed, as Democratic leaders argue, in a race both parties see as central to the fight for the Senate majority.
