Lansing — Two surveys from a longtime Michigan pollster set off a battle last week among campaigns for governor and U.S. Senate, with some factions claiming the results should be deemed misleading and untrustworthy.
The dispute centered on polls conducted by Mitchell Research & Communications, which attempted to examine voters’ feelings about the GOP primary race for governor and the Democratic primary race for the U.S. Senate.
However, some prominent political figures noted that Mitchell Research contacted participants through text messages that directed them to an online SurveyMonkey poll and the links could have been shared broadly with a particular candidate’s supporters.
In an interview, Steve Mitchell of Mitchell Research acknowledged the links were shareable but said some of the allegations against his polling methods were “bulls—.” He also defended his record as a pollster.
“Who was ranked 13th most accurate in U.S. in 2024 by ActiVote, a third party firm Higher than WAPO, ABC, CNN, NY Times, SurveyUSA?” Mitchell asked, referring to himself, on X amid a barrage of criticism Wednesday night.
In response, political consultant Adrian Hemond wrote, “Address the methodology flaw in your polls bro. You sent out shareable links. Casting bones or divination would be more legitimate.”
Mitchell released the gubernatorial poll on Monday. It showed U.S. Rep. John James of Shelby Township, former Attorney General Mike Cox of Livonia and businessman Perry Johnson of Bloomfield Hills in a close race.
Johnson’s adviser, John Yob, slammed the Mitchell poll as an “easily corrupted trash methodology.”
Despite the methodology questions, the results were covered by a number of news outlets in Michigan. Yob called on them to issue retractions.
The Capitol newsletter Michigan Information & Research Service (MIRS) News, which works with Mitchell on polling, reported that in the survey, the fourth GOP candidate, state Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt of Van Buren County, was getting 0% in west Michigan, close to his home territory that he represented for 14 years in the Legislature.
MIRS News covered the governor poll but declined to report on the U.S. Senate poll the following day, despite the fact that Mitchell initially said MIRS News had “sponsored” the polls.
In the interview, Mitchell told The Detroit News that he actually paid for the polls and simply provided them to MIRS News.
“I am curious,” Mitchell said. “I run a polling company. So I paid for the poll.”
His Senate poll showed Abdul El-Sayed of Ann Arbor with a lead over U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens of Birmingham and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow of Royal Oak in a distant third place at 6%. Most polls have had McMorrow much closer to Stevens and El-Sayed.
Kyle Melinn, the editor of MIRS News, acknowledged to Politico that he decided not to publish the poll, in part, because of pressure from McMorrow’s campaign.
“I told Steve (Mitchell) that the (McMorrow) campaign did raise issues with the poll, and that they were pressuring me to not run the poll,” Melinn told Politico.
Despite the basement-level showing for McMorrow, one of Stevens’ advisers even questioned the poll results.
“This methodology does seem pretty bad!” Stevens adviser Caitlin Legacki wrote on X.
Mitchell’s memo on the Senate primary credited left-wing commentator Hasan Piker as “probably a primary reason for El-Sayed’s movement upward.” A May Mitchell poll had El-Sayed at 28%, while the June poll had him at 42%.
However, Piker visited Michigan in April, before both polls.
The new poll also found El-Sayed getting 67% of the support in Detroit, much higher than people would expect. When he ran for governor in 2018 in another three-way primary race, he got 26% of the vote in Detroit.
House blocks Pride Month resolution; Hall says it’s ‘divisive’
House Democrats read a resolution Wednesday recognizing June 2026 as Pride Month from the front steps of the state Capitol after Republican House Speaker Matt Hall, for the second year running, would not hold a vote on the resolution.
“We would be thrilled if they would like to pass this resolution before the end of June,” said state Rep. Jason Morgan, D-Ann Arbor, a member of the LGBTQ+ Caucus. “That is still also an option we would welcome. But, so far, we’ve been met with silence as to whether this will be taken up or not.”
Hall told reporters Wednesday that he wasn’t taking the resolution up because he didn’t want to vote on divisive topics. He argued he also was not taking up a competing resolution for state Rep. Josh Shriver, R-Oxford, that recognized June as Nuclear Family Month.
“There’s divisive resolutions on the left and divisive resolutions on the right,” Hall said. “We’re not doing any of them. … What I’m trying to focus on is health care affordability, property tax cuts and getting the budget done.”
7th District Dems get ‘heavy’ Israel-Gaza question
Two of the three Democratic candidates seeking the 7th Congressional District seat did not directly answer a question Monday at a Latino community forum on whether Israel’s actions in Gaza amounted to genocide.
Former Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink of Lansing said she looks at the situation in terms of what is in the U.S.’s best interest, which is peace and security in the Middle East. To attain that, she said, a secure and democratic Israel must live side by side with a democratic Palestinian state free from terrorist influence.
“We should be very clear with our friends, we should be very clear with our partners in the region, that this is our goal and we’re going to work to ensure that we do that, for the stability of the region, for the people of Israel, for the Palestinian people, but also for the people of the United States,” Brink said.
Brink’s campaign did not respond this week when asked for a more direct answer to the question.
Former U.S. Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam of Ann Arbor Township noted it was a “heavy question” and argued the U.S. makes “tremendous” effort to avoid humanitarian crises or the loss of civilian life.
“When we work with another country, I expect our partners to do the same and hold themselves to the same standards that we hold ourselves,” Maasdam said, before describing the state of Israel as a partner that has a right to exist and right to defend itself.
Later in the week, Maasdam clarified in a statement that he did not believe Benjamin Netanyahu’s government had met those standards, but also did not think genocide was the right word “to describe the grave humanitarian disaster in Gaza.” Too much of politics had come become an “endless debate over labels instead of a serious effort to solve problems,” he said. He indicated he supported a two-state solution.
Community activist Will Lawrence of Lansing observed during the forum Monday that his competitors had failed to directly answer the question on whether Israel’s actions constituted genocide; the answer, he said, is “obviously yes.”
“When you have a state that has refused every other form of accountability and we continue to arm them, I don’t know how we can call ourselves a just nation if we continue to participate in this atrocity,” Lawrence said. He added he supports a lasting peace for all Palestinians and Israelis.
Heated moment at MI-10 GOP debate
Four candidates vying for a suburban Detroit U.S. House seat took the stage Tuesday at the Shelby Banquet Center for a Republican primary debate.
The event featured attorney Robert Lulgjuraj of Sterling Heights, Army veteran Michael Bouchard of Rochester Hills, attorney Justin Kirk of Clinton Township and Army veteran Steffan Demetropoulos of Macomb. They are running to replace outgoing Republican U.S. Rep. John James in Michigan’s only competitive GOP primary contest this year.
One of the more heated moments of the night came in a back-and-forth between Lulgjuraj and Bouchard, the contest’s two leading fundraisers.
Lulgjuraj called out Bouchard for his family’s political connections and cast himself — as he often does on the campaign trail — as the more “grassroots” option.
“If you want the son of a career 40-year politician who never endorsed Trump but endorsed Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush, your candidate’s there — or whose sister works at CNN, then this is your candidate,” Lulgjuraj said of Bouchard, referencing his father, longtime Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard, and his sister, Mikayla Bouchard, who works for CNN as a senior director of editorial product strategy.
“But if you want to elect me, I knocked doors in this county for President Trump. I’m from this county,” Lulgjuraj added. “I’m gonna be a MAGA, grassroots warrior when I go to Congress. And I’m never gonna let you down.”
Bouchard took issue with those comments and fired back with allegations that Lulgjuraj lied about his residence on official campaign filings and committed tax fraud by accepting a property tax discount on a home he wasn’t living in.
“He attacked my sister. I’m gonna defend my family. If someone’s gonna go after my family, I’m gonna defend them. If someone goes after this country, I’m gonna defend you. He keeps getting up here and lying,” Bouchard said.
“He lied about where he lives. He committed tax fraud — there’s allegations he committed tax fraud. He admitted to it in The Detroit News,” the candidate added, referencing an interview Lulgjuraj gave regarding his residency and tax status. A challenge by Lulgjuraj’s opponents to get him off the ballot was ultimately unsuccessful.
The crowd booed Bouchard’s comments.
Cook bumps Huizenga seat in Dems’ favor
The nonpartisan Cook Political Report on Thursday shifted its rating for Michigan’s 4th District from “likely” to “lean” Republican in a nod to the poor environment that Republicans are facing in the fall midterm elections.
The seat is held by long-time U.S. Rep. Bill Huizenga, who ran ahead of President Donald Trump by more than 6 percentage points in 2024 when he won election to an eighth term.
Cook notes that Huizenga’s west Michigan district along the lakeshore has been inching to the left, with Ottawa County representing one of the few Michigan counties where Kamala Harris improved on Joe Biden’s margin.
The likely Democratic nominee, state Sen. Sean McCann of Kalamazoo, outraised Huizenga in the first quarter, and “… Republicans admit that they’re preparing for a close race.”
“But Huizenga, a senior member on the Financial Services Committee, should be able to turn on the fundraising spigot,” Cook’s Erin Covey wrote in her analysis. “He’s also a close ally of the cryptocurrency industry, which could have an incentive to spend for him this fall.”
McCann is on the ballot in the Democratic primary with Diop Harris, a Battle Creek native and former Capitol Hill staffer for former Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio.
Covey said McCann’s major vulnerability could be his voting record in the Democratic-controlled state Senate, and Republicans have dubbed him ‘tax man McCann’ for voting for a new gas tax system and against property tax relief.
Democrats are expected to hit Huizenga for his votes on health care, including against extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits and cutting Medicaid in the One Big Beautiful Bill, Covey added.
Slotkin bill would keep troops from polls
U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Holly, introduced legislation Thursday that aims to keep the U.S. military or federal law enforcement from intervening in elections, she said.
The legislation requires a president to come to Congress to get approval before deploying uniformed military to the polls, cuts off funding for the military or federal law enforcement to seize ballots or voting machines and, thirdly, protects members of the military from “illegal orders” to do so, Slotkin said.
“We’re here doing this as swing states because we think the most important thing we need to do as senators is protect our polls, protect our democracy in this election year,” Slotkin said at a news conference at the Capitol.
Her co-sponsors on the bill are “purple” state senators, including Sens. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly of Arizona, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Jacky Rosen of Nevada and Raphael Warnock of Georgia.
Slotkin pointed to remarks by President Donald Trump, who in the last six months has claimed over 100 times that the 2020 elections were rigged, mused to a journalist that he wished he had sent the military to collect ballots in 2020, and regretted that he didn’t sign a draft executive order in 2020 sending the National Guard to seize ballots and voting machines.
“I, personally, have asked five different cabinet officials whether they would rule this out, whether it was OK to deploy the uniformed military or federal law enforcement to our polls, from Secretary Hegseth to Secretary Mullin,” Slotkin said. “None of them would unilaterally rule it out.”
Pro-Rogers group goes on air
A group called the Great Lakes Conservative Fund has launched a $1 million, comic-book-themed ad campaign in support of Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rogers of White Lake Township.
“Mike Rogers is a military veteran and Michigan auto-factory worker,” said Andy Surabian, president of the fund. “He understands what Michigan families are dealing with after decades of Democrats gutting manufacturing jobs and killing the economy with their left-wing policy agenda.”
Tlaib bill seeks ICE detainee locator
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Detroit, last week dropped legislation that would require the Department of Homeland Security to maintain an accurate online detainee locator system for those individuals detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or Customs and Border Protection.
The bill directs the creation of a system that shows “timely” information on arrests, detention locations, and transfers that are not available in the current ICE locator system, which is often not up to date.
Tlaib noted that lawyers and families are often unable to find their clients in the system, leaving them unclear if the individual is even still in the country.
“ICE and CBP are abducting our neighbors in the middle of the night, locking them in cages, and concealing their location from their families and legal counsel,” Tlaib said in a statement.
“We must equip our communities with every tool we can to help free our immigrant neighbors from this cruel and immoral system of detention.”
A summary of the bill said it also creates compliance mechanisms and penalties for non-compliant facilities and contractors, and requires ICE and CBP to inform family members and legal counsel when a detained individual is transferred for urgent medical care.
Tweet of the Week
The Insider report’s “Tweet of the Week,” recognizing a social media post that was worthy of attention or, possibly from the previous week goes to Republican political consultant John Yob.
Yob dove into the debate over polling done by Mitchell Research on Thursday, calling for widespread retractions by the media.
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This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Insider: Shaky polls cause uproar in Michigan Senate, governor races
Reporting by Craig Mauger, Beth LeBlanc, Grant Schwab and Melissa Nann Burke, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Craig Mauger, Beth LeBlanc, Grant Schwab and Melissa Nann Burke, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
