Traders on prediction markets are becoming more confident that Abdul El-Sayed will win Michigan’s open Senate seat.
With nearly $6 million in volume, Kalshi now prices the Democratic nominee at a 70% chance of defeating Republican Mike Rogers in one of the country’s most consequential Senate races. Earlier this month, El-Sayed was in the low-60s on just about $5 million in volume.
That does not mean Michigan is safely Democratic. It means Kalshi sees El-Sayed as roughly a two-to-one favorite in a state Republicans view as one of their best pickup opportunities with Democratic Sen. Gary Peters retiring. In turn, Democrats cannot afford to lose the seat if they want a path back to Senate control in the 2026 midterm elections.
And now, the market’s confidence is beginning to find support in conventional polling.
The polls are catching up
A Suffolk University survey of 500 likely Michigan voters, conducted September 16-20, found El-Sayed leading Rogers 47% to 40%. The poll’s 4.4-point margin of error means it is not decisive, but it is the largest public lead El-Sayed has posted in the general election so far.
The internals offer the most important explanation for the shift. El-Sayed leads among younger voters, women and Black voters, while Rogers leads among older voters, men and white voters. El-Sayed also has a 16-point advantage among independents, according to Suffolk’s analysis.
That independent voter edge is especially meaningful in Michigan. Rogers does not need to win Democrats to flip the seat, but he needs to consolidate Republicans and make enough inroads with the voters who do not strongly identify with either party.
El-Sayed’s broadening coalition
El-Sayed’s general election challenge has always been whether a candidate who emerged from the party’s left can expand beyond the progressive coalition that carried him through the primary.
His primary win was narrow. He beat Rep. Haley Stevens 48.45% to 47.55%, a margin of roughly 13,800 votes, after an expensive and deeply divisive contest that centered on Israel, Gaza, outside spending and the Democratic Party’s ideological direction.
He now appears to be building a broader coalition without walking away from the politics that got him there.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris is scheduled to join El-Sayed at a Detroit campaign event Tuesday, her first major campaign appearance of the midterm cycle. Many Democratic candidates have kept their distance from Harris, who remains tied to the unpopular Biden administration and is considering another presidential run. El-Sayed is doing the opposite.
He told The Hill that he wants a coalition that includes Harris, Sen. Bernie Sanders and a broader range of Democratic voters united around what they can build together.
That is a notable strategic choice. Harris can be a complicated surrogate in a battleground state, but she also offers a direct connection to Black voters and the Democratic base in Detroit and southeast Michigan, constituencies El-Sayed needs to turn out at high levels.
Rogers faces an unusual problem
Rogers has a conventional Republican case. Michigan is a competitive state, the seat is open because Peters is retiring, and Rogers already proved he can run close statewide when he narrowly lost a 2024 Senate race.
But his campaign has also had to contend with fractures on the right.
Conservative media figure Tucker Carlson has repeatedly praised El-Sayed’s opposition to the war with Iran and criticized Rogers’ hawkish foreign-policy record. Carlson has stopped short of formally endorsing El-Sayed, saying he does not make endorsements.
But he told The New York Times that he “wouldn’t vote for Mike Rogers at gunpoint” and called Rogers “the embodiment of the cruelty and stupidity of the national security state.”
Carlson’s criticism is unlikely to turn his audience into El-Sayed voters. It could, however, make a difference at the margins if it softens enthusiasm among isolationist, populist or anti-interventionist Republicans who otherwise might have been reliable Rogers voters.
That split is particularly awkward because Rogers has built much of his current identity around alignment with President Donald Trump. The Republican nominee was once a more traditional national security Republican, serving as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, but he has moved closer to Trump since losing his 2024 Senate race.
El-Sayed, meanwhile, has the unusual benefit of appearing acceptable to two very different anti-establishment factions: progressive Democrats opposed to foreign intervention and a portion of the right-wing populist media ecosystem that distrusts the old Republican national-security establishment.
The market is pricing a Senate control race
Michigan matters because it is an open Democratic-held seat in a presidential battleground state. Republicans currently control the Senate, and Democrats need a net gain of four seats to take the chamber. Take a look at the rest of the Senate odds.
Losing Michigan would force Democrats to find another pickup elsewhere while still defending difficult contests in places such as Georgia and New Hampshire.
The market’s current view is therefore more than a Michigan call. It is an early judgment on the Democratic Senate map.
Rogers still has time, money and a state that has repeatedly produced close statewide races.
But at this moment, El-Sayed has something he did not have immediately after the primary: a prediction markets lead that looks increasingly supported by public polling, a high-profile Democratic surrogate willing to campaign with him, and a Republican opponent dealing with a rare internal attack from one of the country’s most influential right-wing media figures.
