Abdul El-Sayed and Mike Rogers met for the last time before Election Day on Wednesday night, and the Michigan Senate race showed no signs of cooling off. Once the debate wrapped, Kalshi’s Michigan Senate market still had El-Sayed as the favorite at 70%. Anyone following the race can check out our Kalshi promo code and full Kalshi review, and download the Action Network app for more picks and analysis on Michigan and the rest of the midterm map.
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What happened at the final Michigan Senate debate
Michigan’s Senate race had one of its sharpest nights yet on Wednesday. Fox 2 Detroit hosted the first meeting between the two candidates back in September, WOOD-TV hosted a second on October 8, and WXYZ-TV closed out the series this week, broadcasting live from its studios in Southfield with anchor Chuck Stokes moderating. Any hope of a calm, policy-heavy hour disappeared early. Both men spent much of the debate going after each other directly instead of laying out their plans for the state.
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Key moments: the economy, loyalty attacks and Trump
The toughest stretch of the night centered on El-Sayed’s loyalty. Rogers pressed the Democrat, who would become the first Muslim ever elected to the Senate, over claims that he’d taken support tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and to backers of groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. Rogers framed it as a matter of national security, telling him, “That is a risk to our national security.”
El-Sayed pushed back hard, calling the line of questioning “beneath” his opponent and insisting his loyalty to the Constitution wasn’t up for debate. He turned it around with a jab of his own, telling viewers to play “MAGA bingo” every time Rogers leaned on a familiar talking point, warning: “When you are winning MAGA bingo, we are all losing.”
On the economy, Mike Rogers broke a little from the script Donald Trump has used all year. Instead of echoing the president’s talk of a booming economy, Rogers acknowledged that Michigan families are dealing with job losses and rising utility bills, then argued that handing Democrats the Senate would only make things worse.
He defended some tariffs as a way to bring manufacturing back from México and China, while admitting the trade standoff with Canada, a major partner for Michigan’s economy, hadn’t been handled well.
Michigan Senate odds on Kalshi and Polymarket after the debate
After the October 8 debate, El-Sayed’s price on Kalshi slid from 73% to 70%, while Rogers climbed from 27% to 30%. The same shift showed up in the broader Senate-control market, where Democrats’ odds dipped from 63% to 61% and Republicans rose from 36% to 38%.
Coming out of Wednesday’s final debate, El-Sayed sits at 70%, Rogers at 30%, roughly where the market already had the race. Polymarket tells a slightly different story: El-Sayed is up to 70%, with Rogers down 10 points to 31%.
Latest Michigan Senate polls: El-Sayed vs. Rogers
An InsiderAdvantage poll that wrapped October 10 had El-Sayed ahead of Rogers by just over 2 points, 47.8% to 45.5%, among 1,200 likely voters. A YouGov survey that closed October 4 found an even closer race, 49% to 48%, among nearly 4,000 likely voters.
Those numbers mark a shift from September, when a New York Times/Siena poll gave El-Sayed a five-point edge, 49.5% to 44.5%. The overall trend points to a Michigan Senate race that keeps getting closer as November 3 approaches.
What Michigan means for Senate control
Michigan it’s the only Senate seat held by a Democrat, in a state Trump carried in 2024, that’s open this cycle: incumbent Gary Peters is retiring after two terms. Republicans haven’t won a Michigan Senate race since 1994, a drought that makes Rogers’ campaign one of the party��s clearest pickup opportunities anywhere on the map.
For Democrats, holding the seat is less about expanding their footprint than keeping what they already have, in a chamber where every seat could decide who sets the agenda in 2027.
