Michigan election data shows how votes broke for Democrats, doomed GOP

• Democrats made significant gains in Michigan during the 2026 midterm elections, winning key statewide races and flipping U.S. House seats.
• Polling averages proved to be largely accurate, correctly predicting Democratic victories in the state's major contests.
• Gubernatorial candidate Jocelyn Benson outperformed her ticket, securing a larger victory margin than Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.

With the 2026 midterm elections in the books and Michigan taking on greater-sized importance in it, we thought we'd take a look at some of the data combing through the still-unofficial numbers, trends and results and how they delivered on a year, in Michigan and across the nation, where Democrats posted significant gains.

As it turned out, all those predictions that Republicans might be facing a historic headwind, given an unpopular war, low job ratings for President Donald Trump, high inflation and historic trends auguring against them were true.

"In some ways, it was completely unremarkable as amazing as that seems," said Mark Grebner, a voter data expert and consultant at Practical Political Data in Lansing.

For an unremarkable election, however, it sure changed a lot.

The polls turned out pretty accurate

There was a lot of worry among Democrats − and not a small amount of criticism in Michigan and elsewhere − about the reliability of polls and the accuracy of using polling averages as the Free Press often does.

Well, they turned out to be close to correct and dead-on in picking winners in Michigan's big races. In the race for Michigan's open U.S. Senate seat, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed was favored by 5.3-percentage points in the RealClearPolling.com average of recent polls over Republican Mike Rogers, and he won by about 7, well within the margin of error.

In the governor's race, Democratic nominee Jocelyn Benson beat Republican John James by nearly 11 points. The RCP polling average had Benson, the Michigan secretary of state, leading James, a congressman from Shelby Township, by 8 points. So in either case, the averages underpredicted, slightly, Democratic gains in those key races.

Benson led the way

The race between El-Sayed, the former Wayne County and Detroit health director and progressive firebrand from Ann Arbor who will become the first Muslim U.S. senator in January, and Rogers, a former U.S. representative, got most of the headlines and the attention.

But Benson unequivocally led the way in this election.

Statewide, based on data from the Secretary of State's Office and the Wayne County clerk's office, Benson, who won 55%-44%, outperformed her Democratic ticket mate across Michigan as he ran up a 52.5%-45.5% victory over Rogers. (These numbers may change a bit as the counts are made official, but likely won't shift too much.)

There wasn't a county in the state where her margins weren't better against James than El-Sayed's against Rogers, the closest being Kent and Isabella counties (at 0.9 percentage points each). In Oakland County, meanwhile, she ran 3.3-percentage points ahead of El-Sayed.

All things being considered, Benson's victory wasn't much different than that of current Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2022 over Republican Tudor Dixon, when she won reelection to a second and final term 54%-44%. Benson flipped one county, Berrien, in southwest Michigan, that Dixon won, beating James there by about 200 votes; James appeared to narrowly win Bay County, which Whitmer won four years ago.

Benson had slightly better margins in Kent County (2.6 points) and Ottawa County (2.1 points) in west Michigan and fared slightly better on her splits compared to Whitmer in the Upper Peninsula, but did slightly worse than the current governor in many traditionally Republican areas like the Thumb and north-central Michigan.

El-Sayed outperformed expectations

Since a Democratic tide was lifting boats nationwide, it's hard to say just how much of El-Sayed's historic victory was due to his campaign, progressive turnout and the ugly race that Republicans ran against him – which often veered into untruthful and bigoted claims about him – including by Trump, calling him a jihadist and more.

But there is no doubt that it was impressive in terms of the vote percentages he compiled relative to the last U.S. Senate campaign run in Michigan, when then-U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Holly, beat Rogers in his first Senate run by about three-tenths of 1 percentage point in 2024.

And remember, Rogers boasted of making substantial inroads against El-Sayed by painting him as a radical and antagonistic to Jewish voters and unattractive to Black voters. But El-Sayed won 92%-5% in Detroit, with the state's largest Black voter population, about a point behind Benson's result. And in Oakland County, where much of Michigan's Jewish population lives, he also won 56%-42%.

He did better in only six other counties, Washtenaw (74%), Wayne (71%), Ingham (69%), Kalamazoo (62%) and Marquette (58%). He also had 56% of the Senate vote in Kent County in western Michigan. (You may note that some of those counties are homes to big college campuses, where a younger vote is believed to have turned out in droves for El-Sayed.)

El-Sayed won 14 of Michigan's 83 counties, compared to 10 won by Slotkin, and flipped four − Eaton, Grand Traverse, Isabella and Muskegon. But he also outdid Slotkin's margins in every county in the state, including those he lost — at least a little — and by more than 7 points in Wayne County, the state's most populous county.

Even in the Upper Peninsula, when taken as a whole, he ran 4 points ahead of Slotkin, losing to Rogers 54%-44% in that conservative region, compared to 58%-40% for Slotkin.

As such, El-Sayed deserves enormous credit for running a successful campaign in the face of enormous adversity and tens of millions in negative ads thrown against him; he also benefited, as did Benson, from a national environment very favorable to Democrats.

It should be noted, however, that Slotkin won statewide even as Trump was winning Michigan by 1.4 percentage points, in an atmosphere far more unfavorable to Democrats.

Just how favorable it was for Democrats

It was, without question, an enormous night for Democrats everywhere, and remained so in Michigan.

Yes, Democrats won the governorship (in a year when historically it would have been expected to go to Republicans), the attorney general's race, the secretary of state's race, took back the state House and retained the state Senate. They elected El-Sayed, who keeps a string of Democratic wins in U.S. Senate races in the state going that dates back a quarter century.

The party also flipped three U.S. House seats previously held by Republicans, with Will Lawrence beating U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett in the 7th District, state Sen. Sean McCann beating U.S. Rep. Bill Huizenga in the 4th District and Christina Hines beating Michael Bouchard Jr. in the open 10th District seat.

That tops the number of seats Democrats flipped in 2018 − in the midterm election in Trump's first term − when Slotkin and U.S. Reps. Haley Stevens won in what had been Republican-held districts.

That means that when the new Congress begins, Michigan's U.S. House contingent will include nine Democrats and four Republicans, where Republicans had previously had a 7-6 advantage.

Looking at the total number of votes cast statewide for U.S. House candidates – a good way of seeing just how far an election has swung to favor one party or another – this one clearly favored Democrats, with that party's congressional candidates total vote 9 percentage points higher than the total vote cast for Republicans, a 10-point swing from just two years ago when Republicans held the advantage.

Was turnout up?

It appeared to be so. In terms of raw numbers of Michiganders voting in this election, there were 4.8 million. That's not nearly as many as the 5.7 million that voted in 2024, but turnout is always higher in presidential years. Compared to the last midterm election in 2022, 300,000 more voters cast ballots this year. Compared to the 2018 midterm nearly 500,000 more people voted this year.

What about straight-ticket voting?

It's somewhat tough to say whether it was up, down or about constant while we're still dealing with unofficial figures, and the state doesn't report total numbers of straight party ticket voters (who can still, paradoxically, vote for someone outside their chosen party in a given race, which cancels their straight party vote in that particular race anyway).

What we can say is that the number of straight ticket ballots appeared to be up, not down, in the 2026 election in some of Michigan's larger counties, including Wayne and Oakland, relative to the 2022 midterms.

Did El-Sayed underperform Democratic candidates in other states?

That all depends on how you look at each race, frankly.

Yes, if you look at races in which Democrats flipped Republican seats in Iowa, Kansas, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas, yes. In a couple of those cases, Democrats did far better than El-Sayed. In others, they did slightly worse, though they were flipping states, no maintaining Democratic control in one, like he is.

But there is no getting around the historic nature of El-Sayed's candidacy in a state that typically elects far more mainstream candidates when it comes to statewide general elections. Sure, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont won the Democratic primary in Michigan in 2016. But he didn't win it in 2020, and in the general election in 2016, Trump won, barely. Michigan, as a state, does not take a lot of risks on candidates who don't seem standard issue.

El-Sayed isn't standard issue. He's a progressive, and he has given voice to beliefs about subjects ranging from foreign aid to Israel, universal health care and other issues that give some people pause in a purple state. Would a more moderate candidate have had bigger margins in Michigan? Maybe.

This Democratic tide appeared pre-made into this election. But change often requires atypical candidates to rely on environmental conditions beyond their control.

Now we'll see what he, and the rest of his Party, do with their chance.

Contact Todd Spangler: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @tsspangler.