Politics

Michigan pollster accuses McMorrow campaign of killing unfavorable Senate poll

Published

4 months ago

June 17, 2026

A prominent Michigan pollster is accusing state Sen. Mallory McMorrow’s Senate campaign of pressuring a state capitol news outlet into killing a survey of the heated Democratic primary.

The pollster, Steve Mitchell, told Blue Light News the survey was conducted on behalf of Michigan Information & Research Service, an independent news outlet covering the state capitol that his firm regularly works with. But MIRS ultimately chose not to publish the survey after pushback from the McMorrow campaign.

The poll found McMorrow at just 6 percent ahead of the state’s pivotal Aug. 4 contest, far behind former public health official Abdul El-Sayed at 42 percent and Rep. Haley Stevens at 33 percent.

“The poll, in the eyes of the McMorrow campaign, understated their support,” Mitchell, whose firm Mitchell Research & Communications conducted and paid for the poll, told Blue Light News. “And they put intense pressure on MIRS, and therefore MIRS decided that they weren’t going to run the survey. That’s their decision, and I support their decision.”

McMorrow has trailed the other two candidates in a number of recent public surveys, but 6 percent would mark a new low — a sign her campaign for the critical Michigan Senate seat may be mired in third place. McMorrow’s campaign told Blue Light News the polling methodology was faulty and that its resulting memo was riddled with errors, including spelling her name wrong.

Kyle Melinn, a news editor with MIRS, said he killed the poll after speaking with the McMorrow campaign and other pollsters.

“I told Steve that the campaign did raise issues with the poll, and that they were pressuring me to not run the poll,” Melinn said in an interview. He added that after registering the McMorrow campaign’s concerns, he solicited the advice of other pollsters, and “didn’t run it because I didn’t feel comfortable with it.” The other unidentified pollsters shared his issues with the poll, according to Melinn.

McMorrow campaign spokesperson Jackson Boaz said in a statement that “Voicing concerns about a poll isn’t a pressure campaign. They chose not to publish a survey that is deeply flawed.” Asked whether the campaign had asked MIRS not to run the poll, Boaz said, “MIRS chose not to run the poll because they agreed the poll did not meet their standards.”

Boaz said the McMorrow campaign reached out to MIRS after “we noticed odd things about the data,” including that 0 percent of Black voters were undecided in the race; 0 or 1 percent of voters in Detroit and its metro area were undecided while other parts of the state had undecided voters at 25 percent, 48 percent, and even 54 percent; and that McMorrow was at just 5 percent support in her home base of Oakland County.

Their suspicion — which they said MIRS confirmed — was that the poll allowed anyone to take it through an open link, rather than having access controlled to ensure a random and representative sample of the state.

The poll was conducted through a methodology known as text-to-web, in which random voters are selected to receive a text message link to a survey to fill out. That allows pollsters to ensure they are reaching an appropriately wide-ranging group of voters. But the McMorrow campaign said all respondents received the same open-access link, which would allow anyone with the link to take the poll — potentially multiple times.

“The outlet that sponsored this poll declined to publish it because it didn’t meet their standards.

It was conducted through an open SurveyMonkey link sent over text, meaning anyone who

received this poll could vote multiple times or send the link to friends and supporters to impact

the results,” Boaz said in a statement. “This is fundamental polling malpractice. We urge either of our opponents, or any reputable pollster, to stand by this shoddy methodology.”

In an interview, Mitchell admitted he got some of the polling memo wrong, saying for example that he meant to write El-Sayed supported Medicare for All, not “Social Security for All.” But he said he stood by the poll and its methodology.

“I have always had 100 percent confidence in all the polling I do,” Mitchell said. “I believe that we’ve been very strenuous in the methodology that we use. We’re very careful about it. We weighted it well, and more importantly, we have a track record that shows we are a strong and good pollster.”

“A poll is a poll,” Mitchell said when asked about the open link question, sharing a poll with Blue Light News from GOP gubernatorial candidate John James that he said used a similar approach.

The controversy over the spiked poll underscores the importance of the Michigan Senate race. Democrats view defending the open seat as crucial to reclaiming the Senate majority, and the party establishment has mobilized hard against Bernie Sanders-backed El-Sayed, who they argue could pave the way to Republican Mike Rogers flipping the seat in November.

But recent pollssuggest McMorrow is falling behind El-Sayed, who is experiencing a surge in support, and Stevens, who is backed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

In the memo about the contested poll, Mitchell wrote there has been a “huge erosion in support for Mallory McMorrow.”

“One of the reasons for her seeming collapse is the fact El-Sayed had received a large amount of unpaid media because of the endorsements by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Hasan Piker the anti-Semitic podcaster while Haley Stevens had an outside organization spend more than $6 million on her candidacy,” Mitchell wrote. However, he added: “Our poll was conducted June 11-13 which coincided with an ad buy of at least $5 million on behalf of McMorrow that started just the day before we began our polling. Therefore, McMorrow’s ads did not have enough time to impact our results.”

Politics

‘A warning sign for polling’: Why one GOP pollster thinks a blue wave may fall short

Published

19 hours ago

October 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Democrats are salivating over, and Republicans are bracing for, a potentially massive blue wave. One GOP pollster is urging everyone to calm down.

Patrick Ruffini, a founding partner at Echelon Insights, has been loudly throwing cold water on Democrats’ hopes of sweeping the red state Senate seats that have become battlegrounds in a worsening national environment for Republicans.

“The polls are, I think, intentionally inflating the size of the battleground,” Ruffini told Blue Light News.

Democrats are pushing to flip Senate seats in Iowa, Texas, Ohio and Alaska — all states that President Donald Trump won by at least 11 points in 2024 — with dreams of going even deeper into the map Kansas, South Carolina and even Mississippi. Sensing a potential disaster, Republicans have significantly curtailed their investments in North Carolina and Georgia to direct resources elsewhere.

Ruffini, who isn’t polling for candidates or party committees in any federal races, said he’s skeptical of Democrats flipping some of those seats, particularly in the Midwest, and gives the GOP a coin flip’s chance at keeping control of the Senate.

If a blue wave were to come, he said it would defy the ingrained partisanship in deep-red states that has mirrored growing political polarization around the country.

“I think it would be somewhat of a historic shift if that were to happen,” he said.

Here’s more from Blue Light News’s chat with Ruffini, edited for length and clarity. A more condensed version of this interview ran in Blue Light News’s Morning Score campaign newsletter.

You’ve been pretty publicly skeptical of polling that indicates a big tsunami for Democrats in November. Why is that?

I think we can read the environment right, but the map wrong.

The pretty large shift towards Democrats that we’re seeing on the generic ballot and in a lot of individual races, I’m not saying that’s not going to materialize. What I am more skeptical of is… the ability of any major party in this polarized era that we’re in to rack up significant gains in states that went double digits for the other side.

I’m not ruling out — I think there will be some [examples]. I think Alaska is one where it’s both an idiosyncratic state, and [Democratic nominee Mary] Peltola has shown some specific candidate-centered strength. Nor would it shock me if [Democrat] James Talarico wins, despite the history in Texas. That would not surprise me, just given the candidate quality disparity, particularly on the Ken Paxton side.

Where I get more skeptical is when you move into the Midwest, where there has historically been pretty large polling errors [overstating Democrats’ chances] in states like Iowa, Ohio. And I think you can extend that to the Democratic enthusiasm around Kansas.

Is your skepticism coming more from the quality of the individual polls that you’re seeing that are showing massive Democratic surges in the Midwest, or is it the history of these states that you’re betting will ultimately win out?

I think fundamentals are going to play an important role, particularly in states where there was a solid Trump advantage. We’re not talking about a state like North Carolina or Georgia that’s only for Trump narrowly, where Democrats, at least in the Senate races, are clearly favored.

Historically the presumption is that states tend to converge on their base partisanship in the closing days of an election, but especially that’s been the pattern in the Midwest.

Specifically as it relates to the polls this year, I think any pollster you would talk to, including myself, is experiencing significant non-response bias favoring Democrats.

When you’re seeing high-propensity Democrats [responding to polls] at twice the rate of high-propensity Republicans, when we know that the turnout on both sides would be roughly evenly paired, that’s a warning sign for polling in this cycle.

It seems like there’s some GOP internal polling saying that Republicans are worried about these states, because they are moving money around to triage certain races. I’m curious if you feel like they’re wrong to be making those decisions?

Absolutely not. They’re not wrong. You do have to take the polls somewhat seriously in the sense of, if you do get a poll that’s within the margin of error, I think you’re duty-bound to spend money in those places and not to ignore what could be a potential signal.

I think that control of the Senate comes down to Texas, so they’re right to be spending money there. If you just look at the amount of money being spent in Texas versus Kansas, obviously it’s a much, much bigger state, and you need to spend much more money.

But it’s not something along the lines of ‘the battleground has shifted. It’s a foregone conclusion. Democrats are going to win the Senate,’ and then the battleground entirely shifts to a state like Kansas or to Iowa, right? I don’t think we’re seeing that.

It sounds like the issue you have is how the broader public is interpreting these polls rather than the polls themselves?

The polls are, I think, intentionally inflating the size of the battleground. And to some extent it’s happening both ways. The polls showing a margin-of- error race in Minnesota is possible, right? I’m not as concerned about a polling error in Minnesota as I am in Kansas.

But because of the number of Democratic internals and because of the incentive of Democratic internals to show close races across the battleground, what you generally tend to see is more of an inflated sense of how big the battleground actually is. A lot of these races just break a certain way.

We’ve reported that Republicans are privately conceding that the House is lost. Is that your reading of the data too?

That’s the best reading of the data. That said, if there’s a three-point polling error or something, then I think it gets very, very tight and anything can happen. But I think that’s the most likely outcome.

What is your prediction for the number of Senate seats Republicans will have?

My prediction for both the probability and the seat count is 50-50. There’s a 50-50 chance Republicans hold the Senate. I think if they do, it’s with 50 seats, probably. But obviously, that can tilt very easily.

Which of these states do you think are going to flip for Democrats?

Alaska is clearly favored. I mean, I don’t know if it’s clearly favored, but I think it’s at least still Democrat. I think Texas is going to be very, very close. I just think the partisanship of the state is — people forget it’s a little bit more Republican than it was back in 2018. I think Republicans are probably being underestimated in Ohio because of the past Midwestern polling error.

At the same time, I would say it’s still uphill in Maine and Michigan to some degree. I think Susan Collins has really been the lone bright spot, at least in terms of the conventional wisdom, the narrative in the Senate for Republicans. I think she has a fighting chance, but I think Republicans are still probably under a 50% chance in both Michigan and Maine, just due to the nature of their partisan lean.

If at the end of all of this it is a real blue wave in the Senate, what will have happened to have made you wrong?

If that happens, we will have seen a level of depolarization in the electorate that we haven’t seen since around 2012. You really have to go back in history for a state like Kansas to flip.That would be pretty unique historically, where it’s a flip where you have an incumbent losing.

That’s the kind of thing that used to happen in Senate races a lot, and then things, starting with Trump, got a lot more polarized. So what that would mean is, maybe this is the start of a new political era. But I think it would be somewhat of a historic shift if that were to happen.

Politics

Ohio returns as a bellwether

Published

21 hours ago

October 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Ohio returns as a bellwether

lead image

Politics

Inside the quiet money pullback — for both parties — in Georgia’s Senate race

Published

23 hours ago

October 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The money spigot is sputtering in Georgia’s Senate race amid growing expectations that Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff will win reelection.

The Senate Leadership Fund, Republicans’ top Senate super PAC, did not spend on broadcast television in the state last week — the first week they were off air in the race, according to tracking firm AdImpact. Neither did Democrats’ Senate Majority PAC.

Senate Majority PAC will also be dark again this week, the Chuck Schumer-aligned group shared first with Blue Light News. It was not immediately clear whether SLF would follow suit. The group declined to comment on their future spending plans in the state.

The spending slowdown underscores how dramatically Georgia’s place on the Senate map has shifted, as Ossoff maintains wide margins over Republican Rep. Mike Collins in public polling and fundraising. Georgia was expected to be one of the cycle’s most expensive and preeminent battlegrounds — now some of the biggest outside spenders are pulling back and turning their attention to more competitive races in redder territory.

The two major Senate super PACs have closely mirrored each other’s spending decisions in recent weeks, with neither fully retreating from the state. They still both technically have future ad reservations booked past this week, but those are not binding, leaving both sides with the flexibility to redirect money as they assess the Senate map. And with two weeks until Election Day and early voting already underway in Georgia, it’s unclear whether either will spend any more in the state.

“National Republicans are abandoning Mike Collins as he continues to show Georgians why he’s unelectable and unfit for office. We are committed to seeing Jon Ossoff through to victory as we come to the final days of this campaign,” SMP spokesperson Lauren French said in a statement.

Collins’ campaign, in a statement, said they were “grateful to every group that’s standing with Rep. Collins and welcome their continued support.”

“With early voting underway, he’s working every day to earn the vote of every Georgian, because Jon Ossoff is a radical leftist who wants to raise their taxes and make their families less safe. Rep. Collins will keep making that case until Ossoff is held accountable on Election Day,” Collins spokesperson Meyer Siegfried said in a statement.

Ossoff’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment.

SMP had pledged in the spring to spend $20 million on television for the race, but as of Friday had only spent or reserved $11.5 million, per AdImpact. SLF had announced an initial $44 million investment, but has so far only spent or reserved roughly $20 million.

No Going Back PAC, which is affiliated with President Donald Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC, has also dramatically scaled back its own spending on the race over the last two weeks, according to AdImpact.

Republican operatives are still monitoring Georgia’s governor’s race, where recent public polling shows GOP nominee Rick Jackson slightly ahead of Democratic nominee Keisha Lance Bottoms. Republicans believe Jackson’s strength could keep the Senate race closer than currently expected.

But they have grown increasingly pessimistic about their prospects of flipping Georgia’s Senate seat, as Collins trails Ossoff in the polls and the overall environment for the GOP continues to grow more difficult. SLF’s decision to go dark last week — so close to the election — raises questions about how much more the group will ultimately invest in the state.

“Every dollar Schumer spends in Georgia is one not spent on offense in red states. Republicans’ financial advantage doesn’t just show up in more ads, it keeps Dems on defense,” a person familiar with SLF’s spending plans told Blue Light News.

Ossoff also holds a massive fundraising advantage over Collins, who had just over $1 million cash on hand as of Oct. 1, giving Ossoff a major financial cushion in the final stretch even before the major Senate super PACs pulled back their spending.

The GOP has been triaging races across the map: SLF shifted money out of North Carolina, another perennial battleground, while moving resources toward defending GOP-held seats in states like Kansas and South Carolina, where the Senate contests have become increasingly competitive.

Still, even as the money going into Georgia has continued to slow, Trump appears to be prioritizing the longtime battleground.

At a rally in Dalton on Friday, he urged voters to “pretend” he’s on the ballot, while praising Collins and the state’s GOP governor’s nominee, Rick Jackson.

Meredith Lee Hill and Andrew Howard contributed.