Haley Stevens has rebounded since Mallory McMorrow dropped out. But polls of both the Michigan primary and the general election don't tell a consistent story.
Michigan does have the largest Arab American vote in the country, but it also has a large moderate Jewish vote outside of Detroit. Those voters are traditional Democrats but I think many would crawl over glass to vote for Mike Rodgers against El Sayed. Feels like this race is going to be really tough no matter the outcome because it alienates parts of the Dem base no matter what.
This is definitely my takeaway - this race is too complicated to be a referendum on the moderate vs progressive electability argument. I think the subtext of this article, that El-Sayed could underperform or overperform Stevens, rings true with me. He could get pilloried for being too far left; he could have a little bit of Mamdani level magic and spark in campaigning and drive up turnout with the base and be perceived as authentic for lower propensity voters and voters that have moved away from the Democrats recently. Either outcome seems perfectly plausible with me.
I wouldn’t necessarily say centrism and populism are at odds though — I’ve heard many people describe people like Jared Golden and Josh Turek as populist centrists.
I lived in Grand Rapids in the 2010s. I struggle to see El-Sayed winning the moderate Dutch CRC voters who may vote Democrat occasionally. Biased sample, but the Israel thing (and him being a Muslim frankly) cuts against him.
I don't think progressives supporting these candidates realize how much of the country has a real problem with electing someone from outside the Judeo-Christian framework. Religion is important to a lot of people.
Religion!!? The guy who said the United States deserved 9/11 has a bigger problem than "just" religion. He's plainly an enemy of the nation ----- and he's running for Senate? Ouch. He's even worse than that Omar woman, and that is saying something.
If a thoughtful observer made a list of all the most important issues, problems, crises, facing the US, Israel-Palestine would come in about 18th. Granting everybody on all sides their bitter angst, it still comes in 18th. So why do idiotic Democrats always end up running on signifying rather than substantive issues? Once in a blue moon, the new senator from Michigan can vote for or against military aid for Israel. Great. Now about all those other 17 issues? Democrats need to get our feet on the ground, and push back against signifying divisions. Israel-Palestine is not the only one. Until Democrats learn to project a holistic vision of this country, on this continent, with this diverse population, they will remain the sclerotic losers they have become.
I think you make a very interesting point. Why DO Dems always run on weird issues that don't affect actual normal Americans? Trannies, for instance, even more strange than being against Israel. I think it's because they have litmus tests for who is obediently in the club --- they all have to pretend to believe in weird things: work on believing six impossible things before breakfast, then you can be in the club. Otherwise, they cancel you, sue you, punish you.
None of this is a way to get more votes, I'd guess.
With how much is spent against them by AIPAC, left wing candidates kinda have to talk about Israel if they want a chance. Plus, it can be connected to more pressing issues about taxes, inequality, money in politics, cost of living, etc
Im really worried that if Stevens wins, young people just wont show up for her. Im pretty young and progressive but even pretty moderate young people I know seem to just hate her, and I really think that could swing not only the senate race but many house races too (Tom Barret's swing district, for example, is centered on Lansing, right beside MSU, a major university!)
You could say the same thing about Black voters if El-Sayed gets the nomination. Glengariff poll had Stevens up 75.0% against Rogers, with El-Sayed only up 61.7%
As a center rightist (going well for me, no doubt), it's hard for me to care about the health of either party right now. That said, if Dems nominate El-Sayed, he's either losing in 2026 or in 2032. My guess would be 2026, and yeah I think he easily runs 6% under "normie Dem" (Mike Rogers would be a Senator today if he hadn't faced "normie Dem" in 2024).
And if El-Sayed becomes a Senator this year, maybe Republicans will be a bit saner come 2032, and I will actually enjoy El-Sayed's loss come then.
People are sick of Israel dragging us into war, decades of genocide, and and leeching billions of our tax dollars every year. Even a flawed candidate will win if they campaign on not sending money to a genocidal regime. It's a really popular position, believe it or not.
We don’t need one more talking head shouting “WHY WONT THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA VILIFY THIS GUY” the quota for both a) the media vilifying candidates on all sides of the spectrum and b) people asking WHY DOESN’T ANYONE VILIFY THIS GUY has been met. It’s a saturated market. We come here to understand the probability of one outcome affecting another.
Me personally, I think a more effective question if we want to see real change is “how did we let things in this country get so bad, that people are so desperate and angry, that they’ll vote for people who say things that ten years ago would have had them blacklisted from politics altogether” and yes that too is on both sides of the aisle. Trump, Platner, aoc, mamdami, whoever it is you hate (and someone else loves) are symptoms. The actual illness is widespread despair and desperation. We either treat that bacteria or we keep popping political pimples until our face explodes.
The last line is why politics in America is SO DUMB. “If he loses by 0.1%, it’s proof that the left sucks, if he wins by 0.1%, it’s proof the establishment sucks.” No one race is one of these things. When a lot of the DSA folks cruise to a general win in New York in D+20 districts, it will prove absolutely nothing - except that politics in uncompetitive districts is much different than politics in competitive ones - but it will be used to “show” that the America wants the DSA and a large chunk of people will believe it.
Note: I’m not anti DSA, just an example off of the top of my head. America may be ready for more DSA like candidates I dunno, I won’t mind, but my point is those wins won’t meant any of the things its backers will claim it does.
Good, appropriately humble analysis. With polling this thin and contradictory, "it comes down to your priors." It's like watching two novices play a hand preflop, putting one on suited broadway and the other on a mid pair, and quoting an expected value from the pre-flop pot and those hands' equity at the river. The reads are guesses, the equity calculation assumes the reads, and novices won't play the hand the way the model says anyway. Muddy race, muddy data — precise-looking numbers built on stacked guesses.
The general-election D+6.1 cushion is the guessed preflop national-average, generic-ballot equity, not a hard figure. Asking whether El Sayed's underperformance will exceed it ignores cushion expected regression closer to zero, state-level divergence from national and--most important--the uncertainty about El Sayed's candidate effect. A better frame is the Democratic cushion that puts the Senate dead even and asking how likely El Sayed could break the tie in the Republicans favor.
The 23% base rate for over/underperformance greater than 6 points is computed on the wrong sample. Candidates who would badly underperform in a general tend to lose their primaries, so they never show up in the Split Ticket database. The observed distribution is censored on the tail that matters for El-Sayed — a first-time general-election candidate positioned well left of the state's median voter. Footnote 2 says this in a different way, "insurgents' track record for not crashing and burning post-primary is less stellar." But the 23% figure ignores it.
The conditional probability for candidates like El-Sayed is surely higher, but a little or a lot higher is hard to guess.
The three post-dropout polls span a 20-point range on the margin — roughly three standard errors between Glengariff and Data for Progress. That's not sampling noise; it's house effects, likely-voter screens, and turnout models swamping the signal. Averaging doesn't fix systematic variance. And the ~4-point sponsor-bias adjustment can't reconcile DFP with the others; it's off by a factor of five.
Worth remembering that sponsor bias is mostly publication bias. PACs release their best result. I'd read its result as a demonstration of how far the top of the range is from the median rather than either as extreme partisan methodology or some undiscovered aspect of the race.
Honestly it'd be nice to have a high quality NY Times poll for this race for both the primary and how they both stack up in the general election. It feels like there's been alot of polling in this race but very little from high quality pollsters where we can get an accurate picture.
Change comes hard for many of us. Terms, language and ideas are hard to release and clutter our brains. A “moderate vs. progressive contest”, really? Can’t we move beyond the labels and focus on ideas, values and the future we want? Dem “moderates” are really just the same worn out status quo candidates that voters just don’t show up to vote for because we hate them. We just had a primary last month in which about 32 percent of registered votes voted…a “stunning record turnout” not seen for 20 years…even with crappy candidates. We had to vote for someone while holding our noses.
Consider polling that asks what voters what in the hell they value and want for a better future. Good grief…
Incidentally, I live in the Sacramento area in a Congressional district between two others who the Dems have picked to run: each 80 years old and obviously tired and worn out. This is not America it’s a nation run by old rich assholes. Another fun fact: Dems have had a super majority in California since 2012…and things are worsening…
Michigan does have the largest Arab American vote in the country, but it also has a large moderate Jewish vote outside of Detroit. Those voters are traditional Democrats but I think many would crawl over glass to vote for Mike Rodgers against El Sayed. Feels like this race is going to be really tough no matter the outcome because it alienates parts of the Dem base no matter what.
This is definitely my takeaway - this race is too complicated to be a referendum on the moderate vs progressive electability argument. I think the subtext of this article, that El-Sayed could underperform or overperform Stevens, rings true with me. He could get pilloried for being too far left; he could have a little bit of Mamdani level magic and spark in campaigning and drive up turnout with the base and be perceived as authentic for lower propensity voters and voters that have moved away from the Democrats recently. Either outcome seems perfectly plausible with me.
It's not progressive vs moderate, it's centrist vs. populist.
I wouldn’t necessarily say centrism and populism are at odds though — I’ve heard many people describe people like Jared Golden and Josh Turek as populist centrists.
No. Defund. Candidates. Ever.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Right. People who say there should be no police (or borders or government) are out of their minds and certainly shouldn't be voted for.
I lived in Grand Rapids in the 2010s. I struggle to see El-Sayed winning the moderate Dutch CRC voters who may vote Democrat occasionally. Biased sample, but the Israel thing (and him being a Muslim frankly) cuts against him.
I don't think progressives supporting these candidates realize how much of the country has a real problem with electing someone from outside the Judeo-Christian framework. Religion is important to a lot of people.
Religion!!? The guy who said the United States deserved 9/11 has a bigger problem than "just" religion. He's plainly an enemy of the nation ----- and he's running for Senate? Ouch. He's even worse than that Omar woman, and that is saying something.
That was Hasan who said that, not El-Sayed
If a thoughtful observer made a list of all the most important issues, problems, crises, facing the US, Israel-Palestine would come in about 18th. Granting everybody on all sides their bitter angst, it still comes in 18th. So why do idiotic Democrats always end up running on signifying rather than substantive issues? Once in a blue moon, the new senator from Michigan can vote for or against military aid for Israel. Great. Now about all those other 17 issues? Democrats need to get our feet on the ground, and push back against signifying divisions. Israel-Palestine is not the only one. Until Democrats learn to project a holistic vision of this country, on this continent, with this diverse population, they will remain the sclerotic losers they have become.
I think you make a very interesting point. Why DO Dems always run on weird issues that don't affect actual normal Americans? Trannies, for instance, even more strange than being against Israel. I think it's because they have litmus tests for who is obediently in the club --- they all have to pretend to believe in weird things: work on believing six impossible things before breakfast, then you can be in the club. Otherwise, they cancel you, sue you, punish you.
None of this is a way to get more votes, I'd guess.
Unfortunately, as far as funding is concerned, it's the most important.
With how much is spent against them by AIPAC, left wing candidates kinda have to talk about Israel if they want a chance. Plus, it can be connected to more pressing issues about taxes, inequality, money in politics, cost of living, etc
I dunno dude, a trillion dollar war would disagree
Im really worried that if Stevens wins, young people just wont show up for her. Im pretty young and progressive but even pretty moderate young people I know seem to just hate her, and I really think that could swing not only the senate race but many house races too (Tom Barret's swing district, for example, is centered on Lansing, right beside MSU, a major university!)
You could say the same thing about Black voters if El-Sayed gets the nomination. Glengariff poll had Stevens up 75.0% against Rogers, with El-Sayed only up 61.7%
Bernie and his ilk are becoming almost as bad as Trump
As a center rightist (going well for me, no doubt), it's hard for me to care about the health of either party right now. That said, if Dems nominate El-Sayed, he's either losing in 2026 or in 2032. My guess would be 2026, and yeah I think he easily runs 6% under "normie Dem" (Mike Rogers would be a Senator today if he hadn't faced "normie Dem" in 2024).
And if El-Sayed becomes a Senator this year, maybe Republicans will be a bit saner come 2032, and I will actually enjoy El-Sayed's loss come then.
Sadly I think it works the opposite way - an El-Sayed victory will make Republicans even more populist.
How sick are Michigan Democrats to even consider voting for a rabid anti-Semite and wealth confiscator?
But almost as puzzling is why does the Silver Bulletin not ask the question how the mainstream media does not expose and vilfy this candidate?
Or is the mainstream media just as leftist?
People are sick of Israel dragging us into war, decades of genocide, and and leeching billions of our tax dollars every year. Even a flawed candidate will win if they campaign on not sending money to a genocidal regime. It's a really popular position, believe it or not.
The genocidal regime is Hamas: they are the ones who want to kill out an entire populace.
We don’t need one more talking head shouting “WHY WONT THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA VILIFY THIS GUY” the quota for both a) the media vilifying candidates on all sides of the spectrum and b) people asking WHY DOESN’T ANYONE VILIFY THIS GUY has been met. It’s a saturated market. We come here to understand the probability of one outcome affecting another.
Me personally, I think a more effective question if we want to see real change is “how did we let things in this country get so bad, that people are so desperate and angry, that they’ll vote for people who say things that ten years ago would have had them blacklisted from politics altogether” and yes that too is on both sides of the aisle. Trump, Platner, aoc, mamdami, whoever it is you hate (and someone else loves) are symptoms. The actual illness is widespread despair and desperation. We either treat that bacteria or we keep popping political pimples until our face explodes.
The last line is why politics in America is SO DUMB. “If he loses by 0.1%, it’s proof that the left sucks, if he wins by 0.1%, it’s proof the establishment sucks.” No one race is one of these things. When a lot of the DSA folks cruise to a general win in New York in D+20 districts, it will prove absolutely nothing - except that politics in uncompetitive districts is much different than politics in competitive ones - but it will be used to “show” that the America wants the DSA and a large chunk of people will believe it.
Note: I’m not anti DSA, just an example off of the top of my head. America may be ready for more DSA like candidates I dunno, I won’t mind, but my point is those wins won’t meant any of the things its backers will claim it does.
Good, appropriately humble analysis. With polling this thin and contradictory, "it comes down to your priors." It's like watching two novices play a hand preflop, putting one on suited broadway and the other on a mid pair, and quoting an expected value from the pre-flop pot and those hands' equity at the river. The reads are guesses, the equity calculation assumes the reads, and novices won't play the hand the way the model says anyway. Muddy race, muddy data — precise-looking numbers built on stacked guesses.
The general-election D+6.1 cushion is the guessed preflop national-average, generic-ballot equity, not a hard figure. Asking whether El Sayed's underperformance will exceed it ignores cushion expected regression closer to zero, state-level divergence from national and--most important--the uncertainty about El Sayed's candidate effect. A better frame is the Democratic cushion that puts the Senate dead even and asking how likely El Sayed could break the tie in the Republicans favor.
The 23% base rate for over/underperformance greater than 6 points is computed on the wrong sample. Candidates who would badly underperform in a general tend to lose their primaries, so they never show up in the Split Ticket database. The observed distribution is censored on the tail that matters for El-Sayed — a first-time general-election candidate positioned well left of the state's median voter. Footnote 2 says this in a different way, "insurgents' track record for not crashing and burning post-primary is less stellar." But the 23% figure ignores it.
The conditional probability for candidates like El-Sayed is surely higher, but a little or a lot higher is hard to guess.
The three post-dropout polls span a 20-point range on the margin — roughly three standard errors between Glengariff and Data for Progress. That's not sampling noise; it's house effects, likely-voter screens, and turnout models swamping the signal. Averaging doesn't fix systematic variance. And the ~4-point sponsor-bias adjustment can't reconcile DFP with the others; it's off by a factor of five.
Worth remembering that sponsor bias is mostly publication bias. PACs release their best result. I'd read its result as a demonstration of how far the top of the range is from the median rather than either as extreme partisan methodology or some undiscovered aspect of the race.
Honestly it'd be nice to have a high quality NY Times poll for this race for both the primary and how they both stack up in the general election. It feels like there's been alot of polling in this race but very little from high quality pollsters where we can get an accurate picture.
Change comes hard for many of us. Terms, language and ideas are hard to release and clutter our brains. A “moderate vs. progressive contest”, really? Can’t we move beyond the labels and focus on ideas, values and the future we want? Dem “moderates” are really just the same worn out status quo candidates that voters just don’t show up to vote for because we hate them. We just had a primary last month in which about 32 percent of registered votes voted…a “stunning record turnout” not seen for 20 years…even with crappy candidates. We had to vote for someone while holding our noses.
Consider polling that asks what voters what in the hell they value and want for a better future. Good grief…
Incidentally, I live in the Sacramento area in a Congressional district between two others who the Dems have picked to run: each 80 years old and obviously tired and worn out. This is not America it’s a nation run by old rich assholes. Another fun fact: Dems have had a super majority in California since 2012…and things are worsening…
Thorough!...Thanks!