Michigan Senate hopeful El-Sayed: Democrats must win by big margins to counter election denial
Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan says his party must win by massive numbers in the November midterms because Donald Trump has already threatened to deny results. Polls suggest Democrats could also win a Senate majority.
Democratic US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan said on Sunday that Democrats must “win by massive numbers” in the 3 November federal midterm elections, because President Donald Trump and his Republican allies are bound to try to cast doubt on the integrity of the results. He spoke on NBC’s Meet the Press.
Trump and doubts over election results
El-Sayed said Trump has already threatened to do what he did in 2020, which is to deny an election outcome. Trump has long maintained, without evidence, that the 2020 presidential election, which he lost as the incumbent to Joe Biden, was stolen.
In July, Trump gave a primetime speech in which he made unverified claims about Chinese interference in the election, and he fired members of an independent federal election commission. When a rightwing broadcaster later asked whether the president might declare a national security emergency concerning the midterms, Trump replied: “Let me just say, stranger things have happened, OK?” The answer alarmed some observers. The New York Times reported that Trump has cast doubt on elections on 440 days of his second term, which began in early 2025.
Host Kristen Welker asked whether Democrats needed such a high turnout that the election would be “too big to rig”, a phrase recently used by former vice-president Kamala Harris, who lost the 2024 presidential election to Trump.
The Senate picture
Democrats are favored to win control of the House of Representatives. Polls indicate the party could also win Senate seats in states that traditionally elect Republicans and gain a majority in that chamber. The Cook Political Report revised its forecasts on Tuesday, saying “A Senate Majority is Squarely in Democrats’ Sights”. A recent New York Times and Siena University poll found Democratic Senate candidates leading in Alaska, Ohio and Texas, states Trump won by double digits in 2024. In Michigan, the poll showed El-Sayed ahead of Republican candidate Mike Rogers by five points.
El-Sayed also pointed out that Rogers had claimed that the 2024 Senate race, which he lost to Democrat Elissa Slotkin, was stolen from him, after first conceding. In November 2025, Rogers was reported to have told events that a single van carrying fraudulent ballots in Detroit cost him the race. “The guy I’m running against insinuates that he didn’t actually lose,” El-Sayed told Welker.
