MI Republican Senate Candidate Gains Ground On Dem Opponent: New Polls

 Two polls released this week show Michigan Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin leading GOP Senate candidate Mike Rogers, but Rogers is gaining ground in the race for retiring Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s (D-MI) seat.

A poll from The Hill/Emerson released on Thursday showed Slotkin leading Rogers by six points, 47% to 41%. Rogers performed better in a poll released Friday by EPIC-MRA, where he was just four points behind the Democrat, trailing 42% to 46%. While the polls show that the Republican Senate candidate still has some ground to cover, they are significantly better for Rogers than a poll released earlier this week by American Greatness/TIPP that gave Slotkin a 10-point lead.

Polling on the Michigan Senate race, which is one of the many open doors for Republicans seeking to gain back control of the Senate in November, has ramped up this month. Poll results have varied widely, but all have given Slotkin the advantage.

Rogers, who was a U.S. House representative for Michigan’s 8th District from 2001 to 2015, has focused his attacks on Slotkin on issues such as illegal immigration, the economy, and China. Rogers served on the House Intelligence Committee from 2011 to 2015, and before his time in Congress, was a special agent in the FBI and a U.S. Army officer.

 

“Washington Democrats have failed Michigan. On the border, on the economy, and on stopping China,” Rogers wrote on X on Wednesday. “But on November 5th, that comes to a stop. We’ll get Michiganders back in the driver’s seat, and always put our values first!”

Slotkin, meanwhile, has focused her messaging on gun control and abortion and has said she is “loud and proud on reforming the filibuster” to cram through Democratic policies. The Democrat is currently the U.S. House representative for Michigan’s 7th District. Slotkin previously worked as a CIA analyst.

The seat being vacated by Sen. Stabenow, who has been in the Senate since 2001, is one of nine Senate seats that could potentially flip from Democrat to Republican control in the 2024 election. Michigan has not elected a Republican senator since 1994.

Michigan is also a vital battleground state in the 2024 presidential election. Currently, former President Donald Trump is trailing Vice President Kamala Harris in the polling in Michigan by just under 2 points, according to the RealClearPolitics average.

Rogers spoke at a Trump rally in Potterville, Michigan, on Thursday and slammed the Biden-Harris administration, along with Slotkin, for overseeing a struggling U.S. economy.

 

“We imported more food last year than we exported in America for the first time ever. We built more foreign autos in America than we built domestic autos in America,” he said. “The interest payment on the national debt is now larger than the entire Department of Defense budget. The average credit card holder [debt] for America has almost quadrupled. It just surpassed $1 trillion. … Thank you, Biden, thank you, Harris, thank you, Slotkin, thank you, Democrats in Washington, D.C., for being a coastal party and forgetting about people who work for a living.”