EYES PEELED

NBC’s Data Guru Warns of Potential Twist in Key Senate Race

The data analyst also identified key counties to watch in Michigan.

A surprise candidate could motivate Republicans in Michigan to vote in the midterm elections, a top analyst has said.

NBC News chief data analyst Steve Kornacki said one potential scenario in the midterms is that Democratic Senate candidate Abdul el-Sayed could push Republican voters in pro-Trump areas to turn out, even if they would have skipped the elections otherwise.

Kornacki said El-Sayed’s candidacy is likely to solve Arab-American and Muslim defections, which hurt Democrats in 2024. If elected, the 41-year-old former public health official would be the nation’s first Muslim senator.

But El-Sayed’s candidacy also comes with trade-offs in his heated race against Republican opponent Mike Rogers, Kornacki pointed out.

“Is his candidacy also motivating Republican voters in pro-Trump areas who might otherwise stay on the sidelines?” the data analyst said on X. “The biggest reason Rogers fell just short in ’24 was Trump voters leaving the Senate race blank—Rogers received 122,956 fewer votes than Trump. This is the audience Trump was trying to reach when he went to Trump +35 St. Clair County on Sunday and told voters to pretend his name is on the ballot.”

Moderate Democratic voters could also defect from the party, Kornacki warned. He said the key place to watch is Oakland County, the second-largest in Michigan, where an El-Sayed underperformance could wipe out gains in majority Arab-American and Muslim communities.

“The risk for Democrats now is that some combination of a further turnout decline and further erosion of support in Detroit will offset the gains El-Sayed is poised to make in heavily Arab American and Muslim areas,” Kornacki wrote in NBC newsletter The Data Dive.

Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat, carried Oakland County by 12 points over Rogers in 2024.

“If El-Sayed is winning the county by less, and especially if his margin dips into single digits, then Rogers should be feeling good about his chances of a statewide victory,” Kornacki said. “But if El-Sayed matches that Slotkin margin, and especially if he builds on it, he’ll be in strong shape to prevail.”

El-Sayed holds a narrow lead over Rogers in surveys. A Fox News poll conducted last month found that a roughly equal number of Michigan voters are just as concerned about Rogers’ closeness to President Donald Trump as they are about El-Sayed’s views being too liberal.

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Trump attempted to rally the base on a trip to Michigan over the weekend that included a bizarre cameo from MAGA rapper Nicki Minaj.

“We’re going to elect, I call him Apple Pie,” Trump said of Rogers. “He’s, like, perfect, this guy. He’s like central casting. He’s what your state is all about. He really is—he’s a fantastic man. He’s gonna be one of the great United States senators, Mike Rogers.”

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Julia OrnedoReporter

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