Michigan Senate Primary

The incumbent Democratic senator Gary Peters declined to run for reëlection, opening up a seat in a state that President Donald Trump carried by less than two points in the 2024 Presidential election. On the Democratic side, the race is between the U.S. representative Haley Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed, a former public-health official. Stevens, who has campaigned as a political moderate, received endorsements from much of the Party establishment, including the Senate Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer; the former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi; and Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer. El-Sayed, who is running to the left of Stevens, campaigning on progressive issues such as Medicare for All and overturning the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, has been endorsed by prominent progressive figures such as Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Nationally, the race has become a proxy for divisions within the Democratic Party over U.S.-Israel relations. El-Sayed has referred to the Gaza conflict as a genocide and called for an end to “unconditional” military aid to Israel; Stevens, who has said that she supports continuing military aid to Israel, has benefitted from more than thirty million dollars of spending from groups affiliated with the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC. (Mallory McMorrow, a state senator, dropped out of the race in early July. She has not endorsed either candidate.) On the Republican side, Mike Rogers, a former congressman, is the presumptive nominee. In 2024, he was the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate election in Michigan, losing to the former representative and Department of Defense official Elissa Slotkin by fewer than twenty thousand votes.

Michigan Gubernatorial Primary

The Democratic incumbent, Gretchen Whitmer, is popular but term-limited. On the Democratic side, Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s secretary of state, is the front-runner. Her challenger is Chris Swanson, a local sheriff. On the Republican side, the front-runner is John James, a congressman representing the state’s Tenth Congressional District. His competitor is Perry Johnson, a businessman and management consultant.