(NewsNation) — With 48.6% of the vote, NewsNation/Decision Desk HQ has called the race for the U.S. Senate seat for Michigan in favor of Elissa Slotkin. See all Michigan race results here.
Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin, Republican Mike Rogers and five other third-party candidates were in the running for Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s seat after the incumbent decided not to run for reelection after holding the seat for nearly 2.5 decades.
The state has historically been reliably blue — described as a “blue wall” since the Democratic party won the state in each presidential election between 1992 and 2012. In fact, the last time a Republican was elected as a U.S. Senator from Michigan was in 1994. However, it has become a battleground state in the last decade, after former President Donald Trump flipped the state in 2016.
Slotkin has been a Congresswoman since 2019, first serving Michigan’s 8th Congressional District and now serving its 7th Congressional District. Before entering politics, she started her career in the CIA, serving three tours in Iraq and making her way to the Pentagon. Under former President Barack Obama’s administration, she served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs from 2014 to 2017.
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Her U.S. Senate campaign centered around protecting voting and civil rights as well as LGBTQ+ and women’s rights. The first member of Congress to have two school shootings in her district, Slotkin also ran on a “no-brainer” gun safety initiative, supporting safe firearm storage, universal background checks and an assault weapons ban.
Republican candidate Rogers also served as a Congressman, representing Michigan’s 8th Congressional District from 2001 to 2015. Most recently, the Army veteran and former FBI special agent founded his own private business.
Most of Rogers’ key issues in his Senate bid also reflect larger party policy positions, including a focus on affordability and inflation of everyday goods, border security, a “growing threat of Communist China,” and rising crime.
Rogers, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, also nabbed a key endorsement that was a blow to Slotkin — the Michigan Farm Bureau, which hasn’t supported a Republican candidate in nearly two decades. Meanwhile, outgoing Sen. Stabenow endorsed Slotkin as her replacement.
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Polling just weeks before Election Day showed Slotkin holding a sizable single-digit lead over Rogers and also held a 4-1 fundraising advantage over the Republican — raising $23.8 million to his $5.3 million. With about a month left before Election Day, a Senate Republican super PAC began pouring tens of millions of dollars into bolstering Rogers’ bid for Senate.
A total of 34 Senate seats are up in 2024 with 23 being held by Democrats and Independents. Republicans can retake control of the upper chamber of Congress by stealing two seats from Democrats or by winning the 2024 presidential election and stealing just one other seat. The outcome of this race will affect the balance of power within the U.S. Senate in 2025.
