Progressive Democrat Abdul El-Sayed leads Michigan’s Senate race after voters trust him more on AI data centers, with two-thirds opposing new facilities and Republican Mike Rogers reversing course late.
Newsweek laid out a New York Times/Siena poll of 605 likely Michigan voters conducted September 15-22 that put El-Sayed ahead of former Rep. Mike Rogers, 49 percent to 44 percent, with a margin of error of ±4.9 points.
On the specific question of who voters trust to handle AI and data centers, El-Sayed held a clearer 46 percent to 35 percent advantage.
Sixty-six percent of those surveyed opposed construction of AI data centers. Only 29 percent supported it.
That local backlash has become the race’s defining pressure point. Taxpayers and ratepayers see higher electric bills, water strain, and grid costs landing on them first. Candidates who ignore that math lose ground fast.
Rogers spent the early months of the year dodging a firm public stance. In January he declined to answer questions on data centers.
By March he said Michigan should compete for AI-related jobs and investment, while insisting data centers pay for their own electricity so residents would not face higher bills.
In April he pointed to tax revenue from a proposed Saline Township data center and said it could help lower property taxes.
Then came August. Rogers reversed. He told The Detroit News, “I think we need a pause, probably,” and later called for a one-year moratorium on new data centers.
The shift arrived days after The Lever reported on investments tied to the data center boom and after a National Republican Senatorial Committee memo warned that anger over the facilities had become “a sleeper issue for the entire election cycle.”
El-Sayed’s campaign accused Rogers of investing “up to $2.6 million...in the data center boom.”
Political strategist Pete Seat, a former spokesman for President George W. Bush, put the risk in plain terms.
"Frankly, any incumbent, Republican or Democrat, should be concerned about being tagged as pro-data center,"
Veteran Republican strategist John Thomas framed the voter demand without surrendering the larger technology contest.
"Voters are not asking Washington to surrender the AI race to China. They are asking why their electric bills, water, and grid should subsidize a tech campus they never voted for."
El-Sayed has called for state and local moratoriums on new facilities until federal rules require union jobs, prevent utility bill increases, protect water resources, and fund power-grid investments.
Earlier he floated a plan requiring developers to guarantee no utility rate increases and pay for their own energy demands with community transparency.
In August, President Donald Trump criticized communities opposing data centers on social media, saying they wanted to be “backwards and poor.” El-Sayed tried to tie those comments to Rogers. Vice President JD Vance visited Michigan the same day and did not mention data centers.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris joined El-Sayed at a Detroit campaign event this week as the Democrat worked to expand his coalition toward voters who backed Harris in 2024.
A Suffolk University survey of 500 likely voters fielded September 16-20 and released Monday gave El-Sayed a 47 percent to 40 percent edge.
Other recent surveys showed tighter contests: Washington Post/George Mason and CNN/SSRS each had El-Sayed up three points; Emerson, InsiderAdvantage, and Trafalgar showed two-point races; a late-August Glengariff Group poll for The Detroit News/WDIV gave Rogers a one-point lead.
This week Sabato’s Crystal Ball moved the race from “Toss-up” to “Leans Democratic,” calling El-Sayed a “soft favorite.” Decision Desk HQ gives him a 67 percent chance of winning. Scott Tranter, the group’s director of data science, said “time is running out” for Rogers to close the gap.
Spending already approaches the $222 million poured into Michigan’s 2024 Senate contest. Six of the top 10 outside spenders this year are backing Rogers.
Cleanview tracking shows eight of the nine closest Senate races identified by the Cook Political Report sit in states with at least one planned data center. A June Reuters/Ipsos survey found 64 percent of Americans disagreed with building data centers at the current scale and pace. An NBC News poll found the same share less likely to support a candidate who backs facilities in their own community, with voters trusting Democrats more than Republicans on “dealing with data centers,” 32 percent to 20 percent; one-quarter trusted neither.
The Times/Siena crosstabs show El-Sayed leading by 71 points among voters 18-29 and by 21 points among those 30-44. Rogers leads by 16 points with ages 45-64 and by five points with those 65 and older. El-Sayed holds a one-point edge with independents in that poll; Suffolk showed him ahead by 16 points with the same group. Only 3 percent of Democrats backed Rogers, roughly matching the share of Republicans who backed El-Sayed.
Fifty percent of voters described El-Sayed as the more extreme candidate, compared with 36 percent who said the same of Rogers. Forty-three percent said El-Sayed is too far left; 44 percent said he is not too far either way. Negative views of socialism ran 57 percent to 26 percent, though 17 percent described themselves as Democratic socialists. El-Sayed held a 46 percent to 39 percent edge on “good character” and a 47 percent to 43 percent edge as the more effective senator.
Left-wing streamer Hasan Piker hosted El-Sayed nearly 100 times and campaigned with him during the primary. El-Sayed has tried to draw a line without fully cutting ties. Fifty-four percent of likely voters said they had never heard of Piker; 34 percent viewed him unfavorably, including 29 percent very unfavorably; only 6 percent viewed him favorably.
Last week Rogers skipped a televised debate on Fox 2 Detroit. El-Sayed spoke for an hour beside an empty podium. Rogers said he “never agreed” to the debate, accused moderator Roop Raj of bias, and noted two televised debates scheduled for October. Raj rejected the bias claim.
National polling on AI more broadly still gives Republicans a narrow two-point advantage inside the margin of error. Yet the Michigan numbers show the local cost fight overpowering the abstract technology argument for now.
Ratepayers did not invent the higher bills or the water draw. Candidates who treat those costs as someone else’s problem keep discovering the same hard limit at the ballot box.
