DDHQ director says Mike Rogers’s time is ‘running out’

Scott Tranter, Decision Desk HQ’s (DDHQ) director of data science, on Sunday said that “time is running out” for Republican Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers to close the gap between him and Democratic opponent Abdul El-Sayed.

DDHQ’s forecast shows El-Sayed with a 67 percent probability of winning in November, with Rogers holding a 33 percent chance. Tranter told NewsNation’s Chris Stirewalt on “The Hill Sunday” that “this one is closer than it should be if you’re the Republicans and want to keep the Senate.”

“El-Sayed’s got the momentum. It’s pretty undeniable,” he said. “Michigan’s going to start voting in about a month on the early side. And look, everything you know about Michigan –– about a third of that voing to come in before Election Day. So Mike Rogers’s time is running out.”

Stirewalt and Tranter agreed that El-Sayed’s support from former Vice President Kamala Harris will be a problem for him, referring to the opposition she faced from pro-Palestinian voters in an uproar over the Biden administration’s support for Israel during the 2024 presidential election. El-Sayed has spoken out against the Israeli government and shown support for the Palestinians in Gaza.

Harris is expected to join El-Sayed, a physician, at a roundtable focused on Black maternal health on Tuesday. El-Sayed told Politico last Wednesday that Black maternal health is an issue they have both been “a leader on,” and he called the former vice president an “inspirational leader.”

More than a dozen Michigan rabbis and Jewish leaders launched a petition earlier this month to push El-Sayed to alter his rhetoric on Israel. They called for him to affirm Jewish safety, that Israel has a right to exist and to encourage the Jewish community’s civic and political participation. The petition did not name El-Sayed, though it was clearly directed toward him.

Rogers did not attend a televised debate with El-Sayed last week and said he “ never agreed ” to it, which resulted in the Democrat speaking for one hour next to an empty podium. Rogers accused the moderator of showing bias toward El-Sayed — a claim the moderator, Fox 2 Detroit’s Roop Raj, has rejected and requested that Rogers appear for the sake of voters.

When asked by CBS News Detroit about critics suggesting the GOP candidate was unwilling to engage in a discussion with El-Sayed, Rogers said that two televised debates are scheduled for October.

Polling has shown the populist candidate holds a narrow lead over the Republican. The Hill/Emerson College Polling survey on Thursday showed El-Sayed at 48 percent compared to Rogers’s 46 percent. Four percent of respondents said they were still undecided.