Glengariff poll finds Michigan Senate race close; our forecast holds at 69 percent

A Glengariff Group survey of 600 likely voters in Michigan, sponsored by the Detroit News and WDIV-TV and fielded August 31 to September 3, put Republican Mike Rogers at 45.8 percent and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed at 44.4 percent. The gap is 1.4 points. On the numbers in the poll, the race is close.

Our model now gives El-Sayed a 69 in 100 chance of winning the open Michigan seat, with Rogers at 31 percent. Before this run, at 4:32 PM ET on September 8, the estimate was 68 percent for El-Sayed. The mean margin is unchanged at D+5.3, and the spread around it is essentially where it was: our 5th-to-95th percentile range runs from R+12.8 to D+23.3, against R+12.6 to D+23.4 in the prior run.

That is a confirmation rather than a change. The forecast has sat at 69 percent through several rounds of Michigan polling published on this site over the past week, and a single 600-voter survey showing a near-tie is consistent with a model average that still leans Democratic by about five points. The width of our range is the more useful figure here: it admits outcomes from a double-digit Rogers win to a large El-Sayed win.

The seat matters to the wider picture. Our model gives Democrats a 42 percent chance of Senate control and Republicans 57 percent, with a mean of 49.8 Democratic seats. Democrats need 51 seats for control; Republicans need 50, because the vice president is a Republican and a 50-50 tie goes to them. In the House, our estimate is 93 percent for Democratic control against a 218-seat threshold, with a mean of 238.9 seats.

Our national generic-ballot average stands at D+6.1 across 24 polls in the last 45 days.