With less than three months until election day, the U.S. Senate race in the key battleground state of Michigan remains essentially deadlocked, according to a new AARP poll released Thursday.
Democrat Abdul El Sayed narrowly leads Republican Mike Rogers 48-47, the poll showed, well within the survey’s 3.3% margin of sampling error. Five percent of likely voters remain undecided in the Senate race.
Michigan’s Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson holds a slightly larger lead in the gubernatorial race. She leads Republican nominee Rep. John James by five points, 49-44, with six percent still undecided.
While both contests remain tight, the U.S. Senate race is “extremely close,” according to Matt Hogan, a partner with the Democratic polling firm Impact Strategies who conducted the poll alongside GOP pollster Bob Ward of Fabrizio Ward.
As was the case in other states polled by AARP, voters over 50, particularly older women, remain a key constituency that could swing the race in either direction.
Significant partisan age gaps are apparent in both the Senate and gubernatorial races: El Sayed trails Rogers by 9 points among voters over 50 but leads by 16 points with those aged 18-49; Jocelyn similarly leads James among younger voters by 13 points but trails James by one among those over 50.
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“50-plus voters are really driving the difference in the margin between these two races,” Hogan said.
El Sayed’s struggle with older voters is particularly apparent when looking at older swing voters — those who, in the survey, did not indicate support for only the Democratic or Republican ticket but rather split their support between the parties or were undecided in one or more races.
Rogers leads such voters by a whopping 33 points in the Senate contest, while Benson leads the group by 28 in the gubernatorial race, amounting to the “biggest difference we’ve seen in swing voters 50-plus in any of our polls,” Hogan noted.
And while voters of all partisan backgrounds reported high interest in voting, older voters hold a slight edge in terms of enthusiasm; 86% of those 50-plus rated themselves a 10-out-of-10 in terms of their motivation to show up to the polls, compared to just 71% of voters under 50.
As with other battleground races and national surveys of American voters, the economy and cost of living remain the number one issues for voters of both parties, followed by threats to democracy, immigration and border security and taxes and government spending.
For older voters, the solvency of Social Security and Medicare are of key interest, as are the cost of health care and policies to help seniors live independently at home as they age.
While foreign policy issues dominated the Democratic primary for Senate – with El Sayed repeatedly attacking his then-opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens, over her support for Israel and significant backing by pro-Israel PACs – matters of foreign policy ranked seventh among voters’ most important issues.
“This is not an issue that is really driving the midterm elections more broadly,” Ward told Scripps News.
The AARP poll of 877 randomly sampled likely Michigan voters from Aug. 9-11, 2026.
