Detroit’s county swung 9 points toward Trump in 2024 and Democrats swore it was a fluke.
Now those same Detroit voters are doing it again.
A black Detroit voter just walked up to Chris Cuomo and revealed a big problem for Democrats.
Mike Rogers Only Needs 30 Percent of the Black Vote in Michigan to Win
Anton Daniels walked up to Chris Cuomo in Detroit and the answer he gave stopped the interview cold.
The former CNN host, now with NewsNation, asked the Detroit resident who he was voting for in Michigan's Senate race – and Daniels named Republican Mike Rogers.
Cuomo pushed back with the question Democrats have been assuming the answer to all cycle long.
"Do you believe people may be wrong if they assume that all black voters will vote for El-Sayed because he's considered another brown guy?"
"I think that they are," Daniels said. "And the reason that I think that it is because it's a lot of black people that are waking up and realizing that voting Democrat does not necessarily mean that it aligns with your values."
A Detroit voter said that on camera because he believes it – not because a Republican strategist handed him the line.
Rogers does not need every black vote in Michigan – thirty percent is probably enough to win the race.
More than $280 million has been spent on television ads in Michigan this cycle – and prominent black Democrat leaders in the state are already expressing alarm about El-Sayed's enthusiasm problem with black voters.
A Fox News poll from August showed Rogers leading El-Sayed 51 to 47 percent, with El-Sayed explicitly underperforming with black voters compared to where Kamala Harris stood in 2024 – and El-Sayed's net favorability sat at negative 13 points, nearly twice as underwater as Rogers at negative 6.
The Daniels interview is not a one-off – black voters backing Rogers have been surfacing in Michigan media all cycle, and El-Sayed's campaign has no good answer for any of them.
El-Sayed Is Losing Black Voters in Michigan and Mocking Rogers for Trying to Win Them Back
El-Sayed knows his black voter problem is real – and his response has been to mock Rogers for trying to fix it.
As Rogers and his allies ran ads with black Michiganders criticizing El-Sayed – one featured a voter saying El-Sayed cares more about west Gaza than the west side of Detroit – the Democrat dismissed them publicly.
A candidate who responds to his own coalition walking out the door by mocking the other side for trying to recruit them clearly does not understand what is happening – and less than a week before Election Day, that is a catastrophic place to be.
Wayne County – the heart of Detroit and the largest Democrat stronghold in Michigan – had been voting nearly 70 percent for Biden in 2020 before it swung hard to Trump four years later.
Democrats blamed Gaza and Harris and told themselves the fundamentals would snap back in 2026.
Anton Daniels is telling them otherwise – on national television, to Chris Cuomo's face.
Assuming black voters will default to El-Sayed because he’s a Democrat is not just wrong – it is an insult to every voter that assumption presumes to predict.
Democrats call it coalition maintenance – and maintenance requires showing up, not mocking the candidate doing the work you are ignoring.
El-Sayed has been too busy campaigning in the sparsely populated Upper Peninsula to notice his foundation cracking in Detroit.
El-Sayed is also a test case – the Left believes if a socialist candidate like him can win in Michigan, they can run that playbook everywhere, which is exactly why black voter defections in Detroit are not just his problem.
Michigan has not sent a Republican to the Senate since 1994, and this is the only open Democratic-held seat in a state Trump already won.
The Marist poll from mid-October had El-Sayed clinging to a 2-point lead among likely voters.
A 2-point lead with an enthusiasm gap and a black voter problem is a coin flip, not a lead.
And somewhere in Detroit, Anton Daniels already knows which way he is calling it.
Sources:
- Mike LaChance, "Black Voter in Detroit Surprises Chris Cuomo by Saying He's Voting for Republican Mike Rogers," The Gateway Pundit, October 27, 2026.
- "Black Detroit Voter Stuns Chris Cuomo with Mike Rogers Choice and a Brutal Democrat Reality Check," LifeZette, October 28, 2026.
- "Fox News Poll: A Senate Battle Looms in Michigan," Fox News, August 13, 2026.
- "Midterm Elections in Michigan, October 2026," Marist Poll, October 18, 2026.