Author’s Note: Other 2026 forecasts can be found in the Central File.
I. The Race
Mike Rogers (Republican) has been at the political game a long time. He is a former Army officer and FBI agent who then served seven terms representing the old MI-8 in the U.S. House. He ran “unsuccessfully” for Michigan’s other Senate seat in 2024, which was “won” by Elissa Slotkin with late mail dumps after Trump had been declared the winner of the state. Now he takes aim at the other seat, which is open due to the retirement of Democrat Gary Peters.
Abdul El-Sayed (Democrat) is 42 and born in Michigan to Egyptian immigrants. He calls himself a “physician” due to his medical education, but is not a licensed practicing physician. If elected, he will be the first Muslim U.S. Senator, but he must first get past the obstacles of many Democrat groups opposing his candidacy and his DSA-aligned positions like the abolition of ICE and adoption of Medicare-for-all in a Trump-won state.
II. State Profile
Michigan has come the longest way from the pits of a massive Obama margin than any other state. Here is what the state looked like for a +16.4% Democrat win in 2008:
Obama won 46 of Michigan’s 83 counties that year; for context, Kamala Harris only carried 9 counties in 2024. He even had more votes in 2008 than Donald Trump did in 2024. This is largely owed to the disintegration of the Democrats’ stranglehold over the white working class voter, which we’ve also seen take place in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. This trend began with the 2010 midterm Tea Party wave and was visible in Michigan’s 2012 presidential returns when Obama still won the state by a comfortable margin (+9.5%), but coughed up 26 counties he had carried in 2008:
Along came a GOP presidential nominee who, unlike Romney, picked up these disaffected former Democrat voters in droves and snuck past Hillary Clinton in 2016:
Trump “lost” the state in the criminally corrupt 2020 election, which saw the use of mail-in ballots double from 2016 and his massive lead reverse itself while America slept, but made things “too big to rig” in 2024. Here are Trump’s presidential margins in three races:
2016 Trump +0.2%
2020 Biden +2.8%
2024 Trump +1.4%
In the old school of Republican thought, the way to make Michigan red was to use Monroe and Macomb Counties to cancel out Wayne County, and then ride the tide in the rest of the state. Democrats get most of their punch from Wayne (Detroit), but also huge margins from Oakland (the former Republican suburban county north of Detroit) and Washtenaw Counties (home of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan. Macomb County, which features the key House race for MI-10’s open seat, is perhaps the most instrumental county in Trump’s transformation of the Great Lakes State:
Macomb, essentially the home of the “Reagan Democrat,” has gone from giving Obama a margin of +36,121 in 2008 to +69,683 for Trump in 2024. That’s a movement of 105,804 net votes toward Trump from the 2008 Obama blowout (and this is even counting the Democrat mastery of mail-in ballot collection in the Midwest, so it would be much higher).
Rogers must keep the Trump coalition intact, and is well positioned to do so given El-Sayed’s various weak points and Rogers’s own establishment Republican leanings, which will play well for him in the traditionally Republican strongholds in western Michigan dating back to the 19th century, such as Ottawa County and parts of Kent County (Grand Rapids), which has been lost in the Trump era.
Key Statistics
68.2% White, 15.5% Black, 8.3% Hispanic
III. Market Assessment
Yet another market swung by polling and narratives shows the Democrat nominee significantly over-valued.
IV. History
Michigan’s last Republican Senator was Spencer Abraham, who was elected in the 1994 “Republican Revolution.” He only made it one term before being ousted in 2000 by Debbie Stabenow, who has all the charisma of a cardboard box. Still, she managed to get reelected three times, having the luxury of running with two Democrat midterm tailwinds (2006 and 2018) and alongside an Obama statewide victory (2012). The 2018 margin for the three-term incumbent Stabenow tells us a lot about this year’s race between Rogers and El-Sayed:
Running into a 2018 headwind, up-and-comer John James (who is the Congressman for MI-10 running now for Governor this year) lost to Stabenow by just 6.5% - a margin 3.1% to the right of Gretchen Whitmer’s concurrent first gubernatorial victory. Keep in mind that Stabenow was the incumbent with maximum name recognition running in a year in which these midwestern state’s hadn’t become heavily “MAGA” down-ballot after Trump’s shock victories. This election example alone should rule out some of these ridiculous poll margins El-Sayed has been credited with recently.
Stabenow retired, and then handed her seat over to seditionist Elissa Slotkin, a useless spook who should be prosecuted. Not that I have much of an opinion on the matter:
Don’t Ignore the Color Revolution Sitting in Plain Sight
By now, I’m sure you’ve seen the video of six Democrat politicians calling on the military to disobey ”illegal orders.” Be sure to watch that video before you read the rest of this post. These are the six publicity whores featured:
Turned away in 2024, Rogers is now after the other seat. Democrat Carl Levin won it in 1978, and then held onto it for six terms. Gary Peters ran upon news of Levin’s retirement in 2014 and won an impressive margin despite a dominant GOP year, but then ran into the Trump momentum and barely held on (an election he would have lost if fair) against James in 2020 (1.7% margin). Smelling the coffee of a reddening Michigan, Peters is now moving for retirement and letting Rogers and El-Sayed battle for the prize.
One final note - Gretchen Whitmer would have walked into this seat this year. She didn’t, and that is your tell that she will probably be announcing for president next year.
V. Analysis of 2026 Primary Results
Rogers ran uncontested for the GOP nomination. The Democrat Senate primary was a Category 5 dumpster fire that has massive implications for the General Election contest: