Michigan voters in Rochester described cross-party choices in election results coverage the afternoon before Election Day, with some backing former Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers and others supporting Abdul El-Sayed. The comments came as the race entered its final hours and showed how split the state’s voters remained.
Marjorie Mehney said she was a Democrat "years ago" but would vote for Rogers. She said she would be "embarrassed to be one today" with candidates like El-Sayed representing the party, and said she expected El-Sayed to win on Tuesday.
Rochester voters split tickets
Three voters on the streets of Rochester described why they were crossing party lines in the Michigan Senate race. Tom Wright said he voted for El-Sayed even though he disagreed with him on "60% to 70% of his policy positions," adding, "I cannot bring myself to vote for a Trump minion under any circumstances,".
Wright’s view ran opposite to Mehney’s. She said, "The majority are Republican. However, there's a great deal of signage for Abdul. So it's very mixed. We've never seen anything like the support that's going on with signs in front yards" while speaking in downtown Rochester.
Mehney on Petoskey
Mehney said El-Sayed has won over many voters in her hometown of Petoskey, which is in Emmet County. She said the support there was mixed, with yard signs for El-Sayed visible alongside Republican support, and said she had "no idea" why the shift had happened.
She called El-Sayed’s momentum in her community "a bit shocking" and said, "They are people I've known and never knew that they felt this way that Abdul does." She added, "It's a little concerning."
The comments came against a familiar political map: Donald Trump took more than 55% of the vote in Emmet County in 2024, yet Mehney said voters around Petoskey were showing a different pattern now. Rogers represented Michigan's 8th District from 2001 to 2015, and he left Congress before Trump launched his first presidential campaign.
Election Day in Michigan
The voters’ remarks offered a late snapshot of a race in which party labels were not lining up cleanly with individual choices. In places like Rochester and Petoskey, the split was not just between the GOP and the Democratic Senate side; it was inside the voting booth, where personal loyalty, policy disagreement and reaction to Trump all appeared in the same conversations.
Election Day was the next step for Michigan voters weighing those choices, and the final hours before it showed a race where cross-party support was not an exception but part of the story.
