AP Decision Notes: What to expect in Michigan on Election Day

WASHINGTON (AP) — Voters in Michigan are deciding a long list of contests that could swing the balance of power in Washington as well as in the state capitol in Lansing.

Michigan continues to be one of the nation’s most competitive electoral battlegrounds, with fiercely contested Senate and House seats at stake as well as the governor's office and the state Legislature.

Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and Republican Mike Rogers hope to succeed outgoing Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, who is retiring after two terms . Their race has attracted national attention, including from President Donald Trump , Vice President JD Vance and former President Barack Obama , who each stumped for their candidates in the campaign’s final days.

El-Sayed, a former Detroit public health official, has tried to portray Rogers, a former congressman, as a rubber stamp for Trump. Rogers meanwhile has said El-Sayed is too extreme for the state.

El-Sayed’s primary win over Rep. Haley Stevens in August gave progressives their highest profile victory in a year when members of the party’s left flank ousted incumbents and establishment favorites from New York to Colorado. Almost all of those wins were for safe Democratic seats — not so much in Michigan.

Rogers was unopposed for the Republican nomination. He ran for the state’s other Senate seat in 2024 but narrowly lost to Democrat Elissa Slotkin.

Democrats need a net gain of four seats to retake the chamber. They have waged stronger-than-expected challenges in heavily Republican states once considered beyond their reach, such as Alaska, Iowa, Kansas and Texas. But Republicans hope flipping the Michigan seat will help block Democrats’ path to a majority.

In the race for governor, Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Republican Rep. John James are the major-party nominees to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

A handful of Michigan congressional districts could decide control of the narrowly divided House. In the Kalamazoo-based 4th Congressional District in southwestern Michigan, eight-term Republican Rep. Bill Huizenga faces a strong challenge from Democratic state Sen. Sean McCann. In the 7th District, which includes Lansing, freshman Republican Rep. Tom Barrett seeks a second term against Democrat William Lawrence, a community organizer. In the open-seat race to replace James in the 10th Congressional District, the five-candidate field includes Republican Mike Bouchard and Democrat Christina Hines.

In the state Legislature, all state Senate and state House seats are up for election in 2026. Democrats are defending a narrow state Senate majority, while Republicans are defending a narrow state House majority.

The state’s six most populous counties – Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Kent, Genesee and Washtenaw – are all key counties to watch.

The largest is Wayne County, home to Detroit and a major source of Democratic votes in statewide elections. It has the state’s highest share of Black residents, at about 37%, according to the U.S. Census. About 8% of Wayne County residents are of Arabic, Middle Eastern or North African descent, the highest share of any county in the nation. If elected, El-Sayed would become the Senate’s first Muslim member.

Washtenaw County, home of the college town of Ann Arbor where El-Sayed lives and has taught, is another Democratic stronghold. Genesee County, which includes Flint, hasn’t voted Republican in a presidential election since 1984, although Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris outperformed Trump there in 2024 by only about 4 percentage points.

Oakland and Macomb counties in the Detroit suburbs and Grand Rapids-based Kent County are key state battlegrounds in both primaries and general elections.

Another notable county is Saginaw in central Michigan, the only county to back the statewide winner in nine consecutive presidential elections, from 1992 to 2024. Trump carried Saginaw County by slim margins in 2016 and 2024, while Democrat Joe Biden won in 2020. In 2024, Saginaw was the only Michigan county that chose Trump for president and Slotkin for Senate.

Republicans tend to dominate in the smaller and more rural counties in the Upper Peninsula and Up North.

A 2023 law gave local elections officials more time to process and tabulate absentee mail ballots than they had in 2020, when a massive amount of mail ballots coupled with more restrictive ballot processing laws slowed the vote count.

Now, cities and towns with at least 5,000 people may begin processing and tabulating ballots up to eight days before Election Day, while smaller jurisdictions may begin the morning before Election Day.

In 2020 under the old law, Trump had a sizable lead early in the night, but it steadily eroded as more mail votes were processed and tabulated until Biden took the lead the following day. He went on to win the state and the presidency.

In 2024 under the new law, Harris began the night with the lead, but Trump surpassed her as more Election Day ballots were counted. He led the vote count for the rest of the count, although his lead shrunk considerably.

Here are some of the key facts about the election and data points the AP Decision Team will monitor as votes are tallied:

Polls close at 8 p.m. local time, which is 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. ET. Polls in most of the state are in the Eastern time zone and close at 8 p.m. ET, but some polls in the Upper Peninsula along the Wisconsin border are in Central time and close at 9 p.m. ET. The Associated Press will not declare winners in statewide races before the last polls have closed at 9 p.m. ET.

The AP will provide vote results and declare winners for Senate, House, governor, secretary of state, attorney general, state Senate, state House, state university oversight boards and two statewide ballot measures.

About 4.5 million votes were cast in the 2022 race for Michigan governor.

About 42% of the vote in the 2022 race for Michigan governor were early in-person or by mail..

The latest advance vote totals for Michigan can be found in the AP’s advance vote tracker .

Michigan counties vary in when and how they release vote results. The first vote updates of the night across the state are expected to be a mix of results from mail, early in-person and in-person Election Day voting. Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Kent, Genesee and Washtenaw counties tend to release relatively few results in their first vote updates.

In the 2024 general election, the AP first reported results at 8:06 p.m. ET, or six minutes after polls closed in most of the state. The vote count reached the halfway mark at 12:12 a.m. ET. The last vote update of the night was at 4:40 a.m. ET with about 99% of total votes counted.

The AP does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow a trailing candidate to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.

Recounts in Michigan are automatic in statewide races if the vote margin is 0.1% or less of the total votes cast. Under the state’s 2024 recount law , candidates may request and pay for a recount if they have a “good-faith belief” that there’s a “reasonable chance” they would have won if not for a vote-counting error. The AP may declare a winner in a race subject to a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2026 election at https://apnews.com/projects/elections-2026/ .