Trump pollster calls Abdul El-Sayed’s polling lead a ‘fake narrative’
WASHINGTON, DC: Tony Fabrizio, President Trump’s lead pollster, isn’t buying the recent headlines about Michigan’s Senate race.
The latest public polls show Republican Mike Rogers behind progressive Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, but Fabrizio disagrees. In a memo he sent to Rogers’ team, POLITICO got a copy; Fabrizio argues these polls just aren’t getting it right. He says they’re including too many Democratic-leaning voters, especially college-educated and Black voters, making the race look less competitive than it really is.
Fabrizio cites past polling misses
A Susquehanna poll released this month showed El-Sayed leading by seven points, and a TIPP poll showed him leading by four points.
Fabrizio called El-Sayed's apparent lead in those surveys a "fake narrative," pointing instead to his own polling, conducted for AARP alongside the Democratic firm Impact Research, which he said showed the race was essentially tied.
Fabrizio’s memo pointed out how public polls missed the mark in recent Democratic primaries in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Florida, failures he sees as some of the worst in years.
He claims the same problems are now making El-Sayed look stronger in the Senate race than he really is.
Fabrizio called out the Susquehanna poll in particular, saying its sample was 50% college-educated. In his view, that’s way too high for Michigan’s real voter base.
He backed this up with exit polls and VoteCast data from 2022 and 2024, arguing that Michigan’s electorate is almost certainly not 50% college-educated and probably not even 40%.
Pollsters respond to the criticism
Jim Lee, the CEO of Susquehanna Polling and Research, pushed back on Fabrizio's claims.
Speaking with POLITICO, Lee said his firm didn’t oversample any one group. Instead, he argued Fabrizio was missing the bigger picture: a clear enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans this year.
According to Lee, the criticism just shows some people don’t want to face how the race really stands right now. TIPP didn’t reply when asked for comment on the memo.
Fabrizio, in the memo, argued on the Susquehanna poll: “50% of the sample in this survey is college-educated – making them massively overrepresented to what they should be. We took a look at 2022 and 2024 Exit Polls and VoteCast data and, as shown below, there is no indication that the Michigan electorate will be anywhere near 50% college-educated. In fact, it is unlikely they will be even 40% college-educated.”
He also noted “a huge gap” between college-educated and non-college-educated voters.
“This was the driving issue of the public polling misses for President Trump in 2016 and 2024, especially in the Upper Midwest states of Michigan and Wisconsin,” Fabrizio added.
“By increasing college-educated voters by 10+ points, and thus decreasing non-college-educated voters by the same, we can pretty much guarantee this poll is significantly overestimating El-Sayed’s vote share.”
The pushback from Trump's polling operation signals growing concern within Republican circles over a string of public polls showing Rogers trailing in a race considered central to the GOP's chances of holding or expanding its Senate majority.
