Month-old MSU polling finds El-Sayed ahead in Michigan; forecast holds at 71 percent

Two new releases in the Michigan Senate race come from the same field period and the same pollster. A Michigan State University Institute for Public Policy and Social Research/YouGov survey of 913 registered voters, fielded August 10-20, had Democrat Abdul El-Sayed at 48 percent and Republican Mike Rogers at 44 percent. The companion sample of 779 likely voters over the same dates had El-Sayed at 50 percent and Rogers at 45 percent. Neither release reports a margin of error, so the gap in each is best read as a narrow one in a close race.

Our forecast did not move. The model gives El-Sayed a 71 in 100 chance of winning the seat, against 29 percent for Rogers, the same figures as the previous run earlier this morning. The mean projected margin is unchanged at D+3.2, and the 5th-to-95th percentile range shifted by a tenth of a point at each end, to R+6.3 through D+12.6. That is noise, not news. Both surveys closed on August 20, more than a month before today, and they sit alongside more recent Michigan polling already in the average.

The seat is open; the incumbent is Democrat Gary Peters. In the Senate overall, our model gives Democrats a 51 percent chance of winning control and Republicans 48 percent, with a mean of 50.5 Democratic seats. Democrats need 51 seats for control and Republicans need 50, because the vice president is a Republican and a 50-50 tie goes to them. Michigan is one of the races that decides which side of that line the chamber lands on.

The House picture is separate and steadier: our model gives Democrats a 98 percent chance of reaching the 218 seats needed, with a mean of 245.8. Our simulation correlates error nationally, by census division, by state and by district, but we have no data to correlate demographically similar districts across the map, so that 98 percent is marginally firmer than a fuller accounting would leave it.