With early voting already underway and Election Day three days off, Michigan has emerged as one of the handful of Senate races both parties agree could decide who runs the chamber next year. Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and Republican Mike Rogers are running roughly even for the seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Gary Peters, and the Cook Political Report and the University of Virginia's Sabato's Crystal Ball both still list the race as a pure toss-up heading into the final weekend.

The clearest snapshot came from an EPIC MRA poll of 600 likely Michigan voters conducted Aug. 22-28, which had El-Sayed ahead of Rogers 47% to 43%, with 10% still undecided or declining to answer. A survey taken just two weeks earlier, Aug. 11-17, showed an even tighter 48%-47% split. El-Sayed, a physician and former Detroit health director, has led every post-primary poll but one since beating Rep. Haley Stevens in a bruising Democratic primary that left some party factions grumbling. Rogers, a former congressman who also ran for the seat in 2024, is making his second straight bid for it.

A map with few true battlegrounds left

Michigan's closeness matters because so few other Senate races remain genuinely in doubt. Republicans head into Tuesday controlling the chamber 53-47, and strategists in both parties say Michigan, along with Maine — where longtime GOP Sen. Susan Collins is fighting off Democratic state Senate leader Troy Jackson after her original challenger, Graham Platner, dropped out amid an assault allegation he denies — represent the last pure jump balls on the map. Ohio and Alaska have also been competitive, but analysts in both parties increasingly describe Michigan as the single state most likely to flip control of a seat on election night.

STILL A TOSS-UP, STILL ANYONE'S RACE

That uncertainty has pulled national figures into the state in the campaign's last days. Former President Trump has made repeated visits to the broader Midwest to boost Republican candidates, while Vice President JD Vance and former President Obama have both been dispatched to pivotal states in the campaign's closing stretch, according to wire service reporting on the parties' final get-out-the-vote pushes. Michigan Republicans are betting that lingering affordability frustrations with Democratic leadership in Lansing and Washington will carry Rogers across the finish line, while El-Sayed's campaign has leaned on reproductive rights and health care access, issues that powered Democratic wins in the state in recent cycles.

Turnout operations on both sides describe record early-voting interest, mirroring a pattern seen in several other battleground states this cycle. With no reliable public polling released in the final week, both campaigns say the race will likely come down to which side does a better job getting its own voters to the polls on a ballot that, unusually, has no presidential race to drive turnout on its own.

Whichever way Michigan breaks, the result won't be final on election night alone — both parties are bracing for a count that could stretch into Wednesday given the volume of absentee ballots the state expects to process.