Senate hopefuls Mike Rogers and Abdul El-Sayed exchanged shots in a testy debate on Wednesday night, using their final meeting to try to sway disaffected voters.

Rogers accused his Democratic rival of being tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, a Middle East extremist group. El-Sayed implied that his Republican opponent is a puppet of President Donald Trump who has been bought by billionaires and is at fault for the war in Iran.

The exchanges were intended to rile up the party faithful in the closely fought US Senate race — and target core parts of their opponent’s coalition. Rogers sought to appeal directly to Jewish voters who are uneasy about El-Sayed’s stances on Israel and the war.

“Jewish Democrats who are afraid for their children when their daughters can’t wear their Star of David walking across Michigan’s campus. These are real,” Rogers said. “My opponent’s rhetoric, his vitriol, is having consequences.”El-Sayed meanwhile was eager to tie soaring fuel prices and Trump’s tariffs to Rogers, in a bid to win over the white working class and rural voters.

Polls show a close race as candidates make their final push ahead of Election Day on Nov. 3. And there’s a shrinking pool of voters who haven’t made up their minds. More than 12% of absentee ballots had been cast as of Thursday, according to the Michigan Department of State. Early in-person voting begins on Saturday.

Democrats need four seats to flip the Senate, and holding the seat occupied by the retiring Gary Peters will be key even as GOP seats in Texas, Alaska and Kansas look surprisingly vulnerable. For Republicans, winning Michigan could help them keep control even if other races slip away.

The contest is one of the most expensive ever in Michigan, with advertising spending topping $280 million, according to AdImpact, underlining how the state has become one of the most consequential and closely divided political battlegrounds in the US. Two years ago, Senator Elissa Slotkin defeated Rogers by more than 19,000 votes, or less than 0.5% of ballots cast for Michigan’s other Senate seat.

Last week, El-Sayed visited a 200-year-old soybean farm in Gratiot County, a region Trump won by two-to-one margin in 2024. Farmers there told him that Trump’s trade war has priced Michigan crops out of markets in Canada and China, while the war with Iran has driven up diesel and fertilizer costs. El-Sayed has vowed to use a seat in the Senate to challenge both.

“When you look at what this administration has done, the devastation of an economic policy that is not coherent, ham-fisted, chaotic, it is devastating communities like this,” El-Sayed said. “Whether it’s this war in Iran or this insane trade war, none of this makes sense.”Rogers, meanwhile, has courted Black voters in Detroit with a plan to help them buy homes. And he has assailed El-Sayed, who could become the first Muslim elected to the US Senate, for being more focused on the Middle East than Michigan.

Like other GOP candidates, Rogers has had to contend with Trump’s sagging approval ratings. Though he has Trump’s endorsement — and Trump is set to attend a rally in Port Huron, Michigan near the Canadian border on Sunday — Rogers called for the end of the trade war with Canada, hoping to sway business owners, auto executives and farmers harmed by the fight. And he took issue with Trump for waiving sanctions and striking a diesel-import deal with Russia.

Still, Rogers has supported the war in Iran, but said in a debate earlier this monmth that it’s now time to end the conflict because of its impact on fuel prices.

“If we don’t stop what’s going on in the Middle East, we’re going to be in worse shape,” said Brian Asbury, 58, an independent who supports the war. Asbury said that he may vote for Democrat Jocelyn Benson in the governor’s race, but won’t back El-Sayed.

“I don’t care if I like the Republican or not,” Asbury said. “I’m not voting for him.”Rogers and other Republicans have been trying to make the case to GOP voters that they shouldn’t just sit on their hands in the midterms. Trump voters have shown a tendency to stay away from the polls when the president isn’t on the ballot, and this year there are signs of buyer’s remorse among voters who supported Trump in 2024. Yet some Rogers supporters said the prospect of an El-Sayed win alone should be enough to motivate Republicans.

“The Democrats nominated an Islamist socialist, so I think Rogers will win,” said Brian Pannebecker, whose group Auto Workers for Trump has held rallies for Rogers at auto plants.

El-Sayed, who isn’t a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, has been clear about his religious background while pushing back on the idea that Islam is incompatible with American values. In an exchange that went viral on social media, El-Sayed said a young man who asked if he disavowed the Muslim Brotherhood was attempting to amplify bigoted ideas about Muslim Americans.

To get out the vote, El-Sayed has turned to Democratic stars across the party’s ideological spectrum. On Saturday, former President Barack Obama plans to campaign for El-Sayed, a move that could help energize Black voters and other traditional Democrats. Last week, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who gave $1 million to El-Sayed’s campaign, joined him on a swing through the state.

El-Sayed’s biggest challenge lies in winning over Jewish voters who are uncomfortable about his rhetoric on the Middle East and his links to podcaster Hasan Piker, who has been involved in a string of antisemitism controversies. A group of Jewish voters called Nonnegotiable Michigan has said that to secure their votes, El-Sayed must publicly recognize Israel’s sovereignty and stop claiming Israel caused the Iran war. So far, he has declined.

Rabbi Josh Whinston of Temple Beth Emeth, a liberal-leaning congregation in Ann Arbor, said El-Sayed has frustrated many voters in what has long been a core Democratic constituency. Whinston said while El-Sayed is likely to be supported by the majority of the state’s Jewish voters, “he won’t get what he should in a year like this, because of the rhetoric he uses and his refusal to walk it back.”What El-Sayed loses among the state’s 80,000 Jews he could make up with Michigan’s Muslim voters, who number more than 200,000, according to Emgage, a political advocacy group for Muslim Americans. In 2024, many Muslim voters wouldn’t back Kamala Harris because of the Biden administration’s support for Israel.

Outperforming Harris and other Democrats in GOP-dominated rural areas where tariffs and inflation have hurt farmers could also help El-Sayed offset fissures in his party’s base. After a record $3 billion in agricultural exports in 2024, shipments of wheat, soybean meal, apples and cherries plummeted in 2025, according to the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Marc Raycraft, 79, who runs a farm north of Alma, Michigan, said at an El-Sayed rally that prices for his crops have declined 25%.

“I’m a registered Republican but I’ve been voting for Democrats for 20 years,” said Raycraft, who indicated he was leaning toward voting for El-Sayed. “This is a difficult time and it’s just chaotic.”