Two EPIC-MRA polls in Michigan nudge our Senate forecast to 62 percent for El-Sayed

Two new EPIC-MRA surveys of the Michigan Senate race, each of 600 likely voters and each fielded August 22-28, 2026, put Democrat Abdul El-Sayed at 50 percent to Republican Mike Rogers's 45 in one, and at 47 to 43 in the other. Both point the same way, and neither is far from the other.

Our forecast moved with them, but modestly. We now give El-Sayed a 62 in 100 chance of winning the seat, up from 57 percent at our previous run at 12:30 PM ET on August 29. Our mean margin went from D+1.2 to D+1.9. The 5th-to-95th percentile range narrowed slightly, from R+9.3 to D+11.8 to R+8.6 to D+12.5. That range is the more useful number here: an outcome anywhere from a mid-single-digit Republican win to a double-digit Democratic one remains well inside what our model treats as ordinary.

So the direction of the race is not new information. What the EPIC-MRA pair does is add two same-field readings on the Democratic side of even, which firms up an estimate that had been sitting close to a tossup for most of August. The seat is open, with Democrat Gary Peters the incumbent not on the ballot.

Nationally, our model gives Democrats a 44 percent chance of Senate control and Republicans 56 percent, with a mean of 49.9 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 their side. That arithmetic is why a two-point mean margin in Michigan carries as much weight as it does. Our generic-ballot average stands at D+6.6 across 22 polls in a 45-day window, and our House estimate gives Democrats a 93 percent chance of a majority, on a mean of 241 seats.