Election forecaster Sabato’s Crystal Ball shifted Michigan’s Senate race from a toss-up rating to “Leans Democratic” as part of a series of shifting midterm election predictions favoring Democrats.
The assessment says the race now favors former public health official and progressive Democrat Abdul el Sayed in his campaign against Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers. The shift toward el Sayed comes as the University of Virginia forecaster shifted 10 races toward Democrats, placing the reason for the rating changes on “the poor national environment for Republicans.”
“We continue to believe that progressive Abdul El-Sayed (D) will underperform what a Democratic Senate candidate could or should get in Michigan in a year like 2026,” the election forecaster wrote in its assessment of the Michigan Senate race. “Yet we still have viewed him as a soft favorite to win, and we’re going to formalize that by pushing his race to Leans Democratic.”
Sabato’s Crystal Ball pointed to recent polling in the race, which largely has el Sayed leading by a slim margin, with the exception of a Suffolk University poll from Tuesday showing the progressive up by 7 percentage points. Rogers has largely stayed beneath 46% in polls.
However, the forecaster said there is a chance that el Sayed could be a disappointment to Democrats in the general election, similar to how former GOP Senate candidates Herschel Walker and Todd Akin were for Republicans in 2022 and 2012, respectively.
“El-Sayed may yet turn out to be the Democrats’ answer to Herschel Walker or Todd Akin or other Republicans who kicked away past winnable Senate races in favorable environments, but we do see him with an edge at this point,” Sabato’s Crystal Ball wrote in the assessment.
The Washington Examiner has reached out to Rogers’ and el Sayed’s campaigns for comment.
The rating change comes just six weeks before Election Day in the 2026 midterm races. It also comes one day after Rogers broke from President Donald Trump, who endorses Rogers’s campaign, by calling for an end to the Iran war in a new ad.
“Michigan families are struggling with the price of everyday life,” Rogers says in the new ad. “Groceries cost too much. We have to bring prices down. The war with Iran needs to end, and end quickly.”
Likewise, Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA), who is running for Senate in Iowa against Democrat Josh Turek, also called for an end to the Iran war on Monday, just one day before Sabato’s Crystal Ball shifted her race from “Leans Republican” to a toss-up.
Another prominent election forecaster, Cook Political Report, lists both Iowa and Michigan’s Senate races, each in states that Trump won in 2024, as “toss-up” races. Both el Sayed and Turek have campaigned on the Democrats’ messaging against the Iran war and high energy prices since the start of the conflict in February.