Who won Michigan was moving toward Abdul El-Sayed as estimated he was very likely to win the Michigan U.S. Senate race with 62 percent of the vote counted. The projection came after hours of shifting vote totals in the race against Mike Rogers.
At 12:45 a.m. Wednesday, the estimate put El-Sayed ahead by 5.5 percentage points. also said he led Rogers 50.7 percent to 47.4 percent with 62 percent counted, after earlier updates showed smaller margins as more ballots were added.
Abdul El-Sayed vote totals
At 11:45 p.m. Tuesday, with 42 percent of the vote in, El-Sayed led Rogers 50.5 percent to 47.6 percent and had 1,027,168 votes to Rogers’s 968,716. By 11:22 p.m., with about 24 percent counted, he led 50 percent to 48 percent and had 832,650 votes to Rogers’s 791,519.
At 10:55 p.m. Tuesday, with nearly 20 percent counted, El-Sayed led 52 percent to 46 percent and had 720,806 votes to Rogers’s 629,858. Earlier, at 9:45 p.m., he had 480,431 votes to Rogers’s 382,268, and he was ahead 55 percent to 44 percent with about 9.4 percent counted.
New York Times estimate
first gave its best estimate at 12:12 a.m. Wednesday, saying El-Sayed would win the U.S. Senate seat. The later update at 12:45 a.m. Wednesday sharpened that call to a very likely win as the count reached 62 percent.
The race had initially been described as far too early to call when only about 9.4 percent of the vote had been counted. That early caution and the later estimate showed how quickly the result moved from open to heavily favored as more ballots were tallied.
Michigan U.S. Senate race
Abdul El-Sayed and Mike Rogers were the two candidates in the Michigan U.S. Senate race, so each new count changed the reported margin for both sides. The remaining votes could still narrow the spread, but the reported projection already placed El-Sayed in front by a margin large enough to draw a call.
Readers following the race now need the final tally, not the live estimate. Until the count is complete, the decisive point is that the reported lead kept growing as ballots came in, ending the night with El-Sayed ahead in both vote share and raw votes.
