After the bruising Michigan Senate primary a new Fox News poll was published showing Abdul El-Sayed four points behind Mike Rogers, with Rogers himself at 51% (Rogers 51%, 47% El-Sayed). That was just one poll. But it crystallized for many Democrats and confirmed for many of El-Sayed’s critics that Democrats had just nominated a man who couldn’t win a general election in Michigan. Today EPIC-MRA, usually seen as the leading Michigan pollster, released a new poll showing El-Sayed at 47% and Rogers at 43%. In this case, we have another poll from EPIC-MRA released about exactly a month ago which showed the reverse: Rogers 46% and El-Sayed 43%. So we’re able to make an apples to apples comparison which shows El-Sayed’s standing in a pretty strong light.
And those aren’t the only polls. Since the election four polls had been released before the new EPIC-MRA poll. Two of those were partisan polls. One from the (Democratic) Senate Majority PAC (El-Sayed +6), one from the Trump aligned and cringey-named League of American Workers (El-Sayed +3) and then two independent polls. One was from AARP (El-Sayed +1) and another from Susquehanna, a respected pollster but generally seen as GOP-aligned or at least mostly working for Republican candidates (El-Sayed +7).
The Senate Majority PAC number should be treated with especial caution even more than the others, even the League of American Workers one, because that’s an internal poll which SM chose to release – mostly to calm people down about the Fox poll. I have no doubt it’s legit. But a campaign or campaign PAC only releases the good polls. So treat that one with caution. But overall we have a pretty consistent story here: five different polls, campaign polls, independent polls, the most recent and most respected poll, all showing El-Sayed ahead with margins ranging from 1 point to 7 points.
To be clear, I’m not saying El-Sayed is a lock to win. I’m not even predicting he will win. Even the textbook case for the “mainstream”, non-offending middle of the road Democrat, Elise Slotkin beat Rogers by a mere 19,000 votes, albeit in the pretty rough (for Democrats) 2024 cycle. There’s also some decent statistical evidence, as we discussed here, that in the last two midterm cycles summer polls have tended to slightly but measurably over-estimate Democratic strength. I’m simply saying that the idea that El-Sayed can’t win this race (and not just as a theoretical possibility), that he has baggage or extreme views that just rule him out of contention just can’t be squared with this data. If you believe that it’s not on the basis of any numbers. It’s a hunch or a gut feeling. And maybe you’re right. But be clear with yourself that it’s a hunch.
This cumulative data also suggests that the run of fairly unfriendly news cycles for El-Sayed over the last few weeks, especially the recent Piker one, haven’t mattered on the ground in Michigan nearly as much as national commentary seems to suggest. This could just mean of course that El-Sayed is running a really good campaign. But I would suggest that at least in the short term the movement is tied to the straightforward fact that a bruising – bordering on vicious – primary fight is going to depress support for the winning candidate vs the general election opponent (Mike Rogers) because the losing primary opponent’s supporters (Haley Stevens, in this case) are going to be mad at the winner. It’s then on the winner to re-coalesce their coalition’s support for the general.
And indeed, the available evidence suggests that’s what’s happening. In the Fox poll mentioned above, only 69% of Democrats and Democratic-aligned independents who didn’t identify with the DSA were supporting El-Sayed. That was a pretty bad number. But the upside of that number was that unlike Rogers, who had 96% of Republicans behind him, El-Sayed had a lot of room to grow. And the trend of recent polls suggests El-Sayed is succeeding in bringing those non-DSA aligned Democrats back into the fold.
Again, my point here isn’t that Rogers is toast. I’m not saying El-Sayed has this wrapped up. I’m saying that the idea that he can’t win or that the results of the primary were some kind of decisive setback for Democrats’ chances just can’t be squared with the available evidence. At least not so far. This is very much a race and it’s one in which El-Sayed kind of has to be viewed as a favorite to at least some degree. The more adverse way of looking at this of course is that you’d gotta kind of suck as a Democrat to be losing in a purple to blue-ish state in an environment like this. But I don’t think any Democrats I know cares very much about why El-Sayed is well-positioned, just that he is. He just needs to win the seat. Maybe he’ll lose. Maybe these polls are all missing something. But if you think this race is now Rogers to lose because of whatever problems you ascribe to El-Sayed that’s a hunch, a gut feel, not something that you can easily back up with data.
