Republican Mike Rogers leads every potential Democratic opponent in Michigan's 2026 U.S. Senate race, a new Glengariff Group poll for the Detroit Regional Chamber found. The numbers mark a clear step forward for the GOP's effort to hold, and expand, its 53-47 Senate majority by flipping a seat Democrats have controlled since 1979.
Rogers topped former Wayne County health director Abdul El-Sayed 44.7 percent to 39.8 percent, led U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens 43.8 percent to 41.5 percent, and held a 42.8-to-40.7 percent edge over state Sen. Mallory McMorrow. The survey, conducted April 28 through May 5 among 600 respondents, carried a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
That means Rogers' lead over El-Sayed sits outside the margin of error, while his advantages over Stevens and McMorrow fall within it. Still, the trend lines should worry Democrats. In a previous Glengariff poll fielded January 2, 6, Stevens trailed Rogers by just four-tenths of a point, 44.1 percent to 43.7 percent. She now trails by more than two points.
The seat Rogers is chasing has been in Democratic hands for more than four decades. Carl Levin held it for 36 years beginning in 1979. Gary Peters succeeded him in 2015 and still occupies it today. No Republican has won a Michigan Senate race in a generation.
But presidential results tell a different story about the state's trajectory. Barack Obama carried Michigan by more than 16 points in 2008 and by just under 10 in 2012. Donald Trump flipped it in 2016 by less than half a percentage point. Joe Biden won it back in 2020 by just under two points. Then Trump recaptured it in 2024 by about 1.4 points, described as the strongest Republican presidential showing in Michigan since 1988.
Even when Democrats managed to hold the other Michigan Senate seat in 2024, Elissa Slotkin won the race vacated by Debbie Stabenow by less than half a percentage point. That razor-thin result, in a cycle where Democrats poured enormous resources into the state, exposed just how competitive the Great Lakes battleground has become.
Republicans see Michigan as one of their best pickup opportunities in 2026. Democrats, meanwhile, need to flip four Senate seats to win back the majority, a tall order that runs through states like Michigan, Georgia, Maine, and North Carolina.
El-Sayed, Stevens, and McMorrow are set to face off in the Democratic primary on August 4, 2026. Each campaign is already spinning the polling to argue its candidate is the strongest general-election pick. The internal jockeying reveals a party unsure which lane gives it the best shot.
Rogers campaign spokeswoman Alyssa Brouillet framed the numbers as confirmation of her candidate's dominance:
"After 32 years of Democrat failures in our state, Michiganders are making clear that if they want the outcomes to change, our representation has to. Mike Rogers will fix everything the Democrats broke, from restoring job opportunities, to getting kids reading again, and making life more affordable."
McMorrow's spokesperson, Jackson Boaz, tried to find a silver lining. He pointed to McMorrow's improvement since the prior Glengariff survey, she trailed Rogers by 3.3 points in January and now trails by 2.1, and took a shot at both of her primary rivals:
"What's clear is Abdul El-Sayed is consistently the weakest candidate against Mike Rogers, Stevens has lost ground, and the more voters get to know Mallory, the better she does, closing the gap against Mike Rogers to a statistical tie."
El-Sayed's team offered a different theory of the case entirely. Spokesperson Sophie Pollock told Newsweek that her candidate's strength with younger voters is the real key to November:
"The candidate who can win a general election in Michigan is the candidate who can turn out young people and folks who have been left behind. Abdul is winning with 80 percent of voters under 44."
Stevens' spokesperson, Arik Wolk, pushed back on both rivals and pointed to other data. Wolk told Newsweek that Stevens "leads Rogers with definite voters, she has the highest vote share of any Democrat, and performs best of any Democrat with Black voters, a consistency across all polling that demonstrates Haley is building the coalition to win."
The three-way argument is more than primary posturing. It reflects a genuine strategic divide among Michigan Democrats about whether to run left, center, or somewhere in between, a question the party has struggled to answer in competitive states across the country. Democratic Senate candidates elsewhere have struggled to define themselves clearly against their own party's leadership.
The Glengariff numbers are not the only data point in this race. An Emerson College survey of 1,000 likely voters, conducted January 24, 25, 2026, showed Stevens leading Rogers 47 percent to 42 percent, McMorrow ahead 46 to 43, and El-Sayed tied with Rogers at 43 apiece. That survey carried a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
The gap between the Glengariff and Emerson results is notable. The Emerson poll, taken earlier in the year, showed a more favorable landscape for Democrats. The newer Glengariff numbers suggest Rogers has gained ground, or at least that the race's dynamics have shifted since January.
On the primary side, a Mitchell Research poll conducted May 1, 7, 2026, among 405 likely voters put El-Sayed at 27 percent, Stevens at 18 percent, and McMorrow at 17 percent, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points. A separate Glengariff Democratic primary poll from April 17, 19, 2026, surveying 500 likely voters, showed Stevens at 25 percent, El-Sayed at 23 percent, McMorrow at 16 percent, and 36 percent undecided.
That massive undecided bloc in the primary should give every campaign pause. More than a third of likely Democratic primary voters haven't picked a horse three months before the vote.
The Glengariff polling memo flagged a risk for Rogers that his campaign would rather not discuss. It noted that the Republican "has a bigger problem facing him in the form of undecided voters." The memo found that 67 to 74 percent of undecided voters in the Senate race disapprove of Trump's job performance, and that remaining undecided voters "sharply disapprove" of the president.
If those undecided voters break along the lines of their presidential disapproval, Rogers' current leads could evaporate. That's the math Democrats are counting on.
Wayne State University political scientist Marjorie Sarbaugh-Thompson told Newsweek the general election will be "very competitive." She noted Rogers benefits from higher name recognition thanks to his 2024 Senate bid, but said Democrats may be able to "ride a blue wave" if Trump's national approval rating continues to decline.
Still, Sarbaugh-Thompson identified a fault line that could fracture the Democratic coalition before it ever gets to face Rogers. Middle East policy, particularly the conflicts in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, looms large in Michigan, home to one of the largest Arab and Muslim populations in the country. Internal Democratic divisions on these issues have already reshaped the state's political map.
Sarbaugh-Thompson described the stakes bluntly:
"The area is highly sensitive to politics and wars in the Middle East. Many have family members experiencing bombings. Many have had family members killed. Concern about this extends to friends of the family with ties to the Middle East."
She noted that many voters in the Dearborn area who backed Biden in 2020 switched to Trump in 2024 because Kamala Harris "did not distance herself from Biden on this issue" and because voters "believed Trump when he said he would end the violence." That shift, driven not by economics or culture-war issues but by foreign policy, is nearly unprecedented in modern Michigan politics.
The three Democratic hopefuls occupy different positions on the Middle East spectrum. Stevens is described as the most centrist of the three and more pro-Israel. Sarbaugh-Thompson called her the "safer choice" but noted that stance could cost her with Arab and Muslim voters. El-Sayed, who has been more critical on Gaza-related issues and earned Bernie Sanders' backing, may energize the left flank but risks alienating moderates. McMorrow falls somewhere between the two.
Sarbaugh-Thompson warned that depending on who wins the primary, the Gaza issue "could pose a problem for the Democrats if it fractures their base." She described the political dynamics around Israel as a genuine wedge, noting that some voters view a perceived embrace of Israeli leadership as "repugnant."
That's a problem Rogers doesn't have. Running in a primary field of one, he can let Democrats tear each other apart over the summer while he builds name recognition and a general-election message. His campaign's framing, jobs, education, affordability, stays comfortably on ground where Republicans poll well nationally. Republican candidates across the Midwest have found success with similar messages in recent cycles.
Despite Rogers' polling leads, prediction markets still favor Democrats. Kalshi gave Democrats a 72 percent chance of holding the Michigan seat, and Polymarket pegged it at 73 percent. Those numbers reflect the historical weight of Democratic incumbency in Michigan Senate races and the assumption that the party's nominee will consolidate support after the primary.
But prediction markets priced in a comfortable Slotkin victory in 2024, too. She won by a fraction of a point.
The broader Senate map gives Republicans reason for optimism. They hold a 53-47 majority. Democrats need to flip four seats to take control, and their realistic targets beyond Michigan include Maine, where Harris won by about 7 points, and Georgia, where Sen. John Ossoff is running for reelection in a state Trump carried. The Cook Political Report has rated the Georgia race Lean Democrat. Senate races in the Midwest have repeatedly shown that Democratic candidates' rhetoric doesn't always match their records, a vulnerability Rogers will almost certainly exploit.
The August 4 Democratic primary will determine which candidate faces Rogers. Until then, the three-way race will consume Democratic money, attention, and energy that could otherwise go toward the general election. Rogers, meanwhile, can stockpile resources and let the opposition bleed.
Michigan hasn't sent a Republican to the Senate since the 1990s. But the state's presidential margins have tightened dramatically, Slotkin barely survived in 2024, and the Democratic primary is shaping up as a messy ideological fight with no clear frontrunner.
Democrats have held this seat for 46 years. The numbers say that streak is no longer safe, and the people running to extend it can't even agree on how to try.