Jim Hoft is making a bold Election Day call: Republicans will hold the United States Senate, and Mike Rogers will take Michigan’s pivotal open seat.

Hoft delivered the forecast during a pre-election appearance with Steve Bannon on War Room. He said the Senate map looks strong for Republicans and argued that Michigan voters will reject Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed as too radical.

Michigan voters still have the final word. Their race has become exactly the kind of contest that can decide whether Republicans keep control of the chamber.

In the War Room video, Hoft told Bannon that he expects a strong night for Republicans after President Donald Trump spent the closing stretch rallying voters across the country.

When Bannon pressed him for specifics, Hoft pointed first to the Senate. He singled out Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin, but his sharpest prediction came in Michigan: Rogers wins and El-Sayed goes down.

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Hoft said signs for Democrats backing Rogers had appeared in a heavily Democratic southeastern Michigan area. He treated that visible crossover support as evidence that El-Sayed’s coalition could be weaker than it looks on paper.

Rogers issued a direct Election Day appeal as Michigan polls opened, reminding voters that they could cast ballots from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m.

His message was short: the state was on the line.

The Associated Press describes Michigan as one of the country’s premier Senate battlegrounds. El-Sayed is trying to prove that an unapologetically progressive campaign centered on universal health care can win a state Trump carried in 2024.

Rogers, a former congressman and House Intelligence Committee chairman, is getting a second chance after losing Michigan’s 2024 Senate race by fewer than 20,000 votes. This time he is running for the seat being vacated by retiring Democratic Senator Gary Peters.

The national stakes are enormous. Democrats need a net gain of four seats to capture the majority, and AP reports that more than $100 million in advertising poured into Michigan after the August primary.

No Republican has won a Michigan Senate race since 1994. A Rogers victory would break that three-decade drought and make the Democratic path to Senate control dramatically harder.

The race changed in its final days when Democratic Representative Haley Stevens—who narrowly lost the primary to El-Sayed—crossed party lines and endorsed Rogers.

Stevens said El-Sayed had told her she was no longer welcome around his campaign. She answered by backing the Republican nominee and later declared that El-Sayed was not fit to serve in the Senate.

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ABC News carried the Associated Press account of an endorsement that stunned Democratic officials less than 48 hours before Election Day. Stevens appeared with Rogers at a Detroit church service after being removed from a planned event with El-Sayed.

Her move exposed deep divisions left over from a bitter Democratic primary. Stevens had drawn strong support from Black and Jewish voters in metro Detroit, constituencies that could prove decisive in a close statewide race.

El-Sayed dismissed the endorsement and said he was focused on the cost-of-living issues voters care about. Michigan Democratic leaders, meanwhile, denounced Stevens and insisted the party remained united behind its nominee.

The rupture is precisely why Hoft’s Michigan forecast deserves attention. A Republican does not need every Democrat to defect; Rogers needs enough crossover voters, combined with a strong Republican turnout, to erase the narrow margin that defeated him two years ago.

Senate Republicans framed Election Day as a national fight to protect their majority.

Michigan’s Secretary of State lists November 3 as the general election and provides the state’s official results route. Those results—not campaign claims, yard signs or forecasts—will determine whether Hoft got this one right.

Until the count is complete, the honest wording matters. Rogers has not won, El-Sayed has not lost, and control of the Senate remains unsettled.

Hoft’s prediction rests on real political fault lines: Trump carried Michigan in 2024, Rogers came within fewer than 20,000 votes of a Senate seat that year, Democrats endured a bruising primary, and the losing Democratic candidate has now endorsed the Republican.

If those cracks produce meaningful crossover support—and if Trump’s voters show up in a midterm without his name on the ballot—Michigan could deliver the bitter upset Hoft expects.

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And if Rogers pulls it off, the consequences will reach far beyond Michigan. It could be the race that slams the door on Democratic hopes of taking the Senate.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

 

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