There is No Evidence That Black Voters Are Shifting to Michigan Republicans

The news media promotes a narrative that simply lacks any factual basis.

Photo by Riccardo Bernucci on Unsplash

This morning, outgoing Michigan Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens appeared with the state’s Senate nominee, former Rep. Mike Rogers, to endorse his campaign against Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed. The move was seen as the culmination of a contentious primary that led Stevens to be on the outs with her party.

I’ll let other people comment on Stevens’s motivations, only adding that it’s unlikely she had much of a political future after losing her bid for the nomination. Flaming out and supporting the other party at least opens the door to lucrative opportunities of another kind.

It was interesting, however, that she joined Rogers at the black-majority church pastored by a prominent megachurch clergyman named Marvin Winans.

For weeks we have heard that Republicans are seeking to cut into the black vote in Michigan; Rogers has opened a campaign office in Detroit and has been working to ingratiate himself with a key Democratic constituency. Given the central role black voters play in Michigan’s elections, this is a savvy move by Republicans.

But is it actually working? It has certainly generated headlines.

We have NBC News telling us that El-Sayed “faces skepticism” with black voters. My former employer NewsNation and Fox News both interviewed the same black voter who happens to be a notorious conservative YouTuber to make the case that there is a flight of African American voters from the Democratic Party. Videos of black voters saying they dislike Arabs because they “own all the gas stations” have gone viral. These stories have become common in the past few weeks.

But as the saying goes, the plural of anecdote is not data.

I looked at the polling that’s come out of the race, which shows either a small or medium-sized lead for El-Sayed over Rogers. Because black voters are a sizable group in Michigan, capturing their preferences through statewide polling is a bit easier than say trying to poll Jewish Americans (I don’t know of any attempt to do this yet, despite the uproar over how El-Sayed has fared with that group).

Recent polls simply don’t show Rogers performing especially well with black voters:

• YouGov: Rogers is winning 13% of the black vote to El-Sayed’s 82%

• Glengariff: Rogers is winning 4% of the black vote compared to El-Sayed’s 88%

• CNN/SRSS: Rogers is winning 10% of likely black voters compared to El-Sayed’s 75%

• Quantus: Rogers is winning 15% of the black vote compared to 64% who back El-Sayed (this poll was done in early October, which could explain the higher number of undecideds)

Based on scientific surveys, it’s difficult to come to the conclusion that Rogers has made any real inroads with black voters. What this looks more like is the Rogers campaign and friendly media trying to astroturf voter movement that just isn’t there. The group Democrats for Mike Rogers, for instance, has been all over social media but when they had the opportunity to hold an actual rally…nobody turned out.

Look, it’s an uphill race for any Republican to get significant black support. It’s a group that has historically backed Democrats for two reasons: the New Deal and the Civil Rights Act, both of which were brought to the country by this party.

But we do know that Maryland’s former Republican Governor Larry Hogan was able to win nearly 30 percent of the black vote, and it’s not hard to understand why. He broke with Trump on substantial issues like the president claiming the 2020 election was rigged. He charted his own course on public policy and built his own political profile.

You can’t say that about Rogers, who has been mostly a loyal soldier for the president (he did do a few pivots near election time, but those are not credible).

The Republicans seem to believe they can court black voters by doing condescending things like handing out gas cards or purposely trying to divide different ethnic communities.

In 2024, Trump built an awesome and diverse coalition. By 2026, that coalition has fallen apart because he engaged in a war of choice against Iran and battered Americans’ pocketbooks. Changing course on public policy would be the only way to rebuild this coalition; cheap race-baiting is not.