In his latest column for Roll Call, The Winston Group’s David Winston writes about Tuesday’s Democratic Senate Primary in Michigan and what Abdul El-Sayed’s narrow win over establishment-supported Haley Stevens may mean for the general election in November.
This was certainly not the comfortable victory that the surveys predicted. Now, the prognosticators have to assess the odds for the fall with little data on a head-to-head matchup between Rogers and El-Sayed. In the two surveys taken in July on the RCP site, one had Rogers and El-Sayed tied, and the other had Rogers up by 3.
This sets up one of the most critical Senate races for the fall. For Democrats to win a majority in the Senate, they have to win four Republican seats. If Rogers wins in November, and his odds have now improved literally overnight, Democrats would have to run the table by winning five Republican Senate seats, a tall order. Excluding Maine, which Kamala Harris won by 7 points, and North Carolina, which President Donald Trump only won by 3, the remaining four states in play were all won by Trump in 2024 with double digits — Ohio (11), Iowa (13), Alaska (13), and Texas (14). The last Democrat to win a Senate race in Texas was Lloyd Bentsen in 1988.
That doesn’t mean these Republican senators are a shoe-in, and the president’s popularity in key states has taken a beating. But defeating them all won’t be easy for Democrats even in a challenging environment for the GOP.
Read the full column here.
