El-Sayed says Democrats must win midterms by massive margins

NYT: Trump cast doubt on elections on 440 days of his second presidency

El-Sayed’s comments came with Democrats favored to win control of the House of Representatives during the 3 November midterms, and polls show the party could also win Senate seats in states that traditionally elect Republicans and gain a majority there too.

The New York Times reported that Trump had cast doubt on elections on 440 days of his second presidency, which began in early 2025. Trump has long baselessly maintained that the 2020 presidential election, which he lost as an incumbent to Joe Biden, was stolen by fraudsters. He also gave a primetime speech in July in which he made unverified claims about Chinese interference in the election, and he fired members of an independent federal election commission.

The Guardian reported that when asked later by a rightwing broadcaster whether the president might declare a national security emergency pertaining to elections for the midterms, Trump ignited alarm among some observers by replying: “Let me just say, stranger things have happened, OK?”

On Meet the Press, El-Sayed was asked whether Democrats needed to turn out in such numbers in November that the election would be “too big to rig” — a formulation recently used by former vice-president Kamala Harris, who lost the 2024 White House election to Trump.

“Donald Trump has already threatened to do what he did in 2020, which is deny the outcomes of an election,” El-Sayed said. “So, yes, we have to win by massive numbers.”

The race positions El-Sayed against Republican candidate Mike Rogers. El-Sayed on Sunday alluded to how Rogers had also claimed that a 2024 US Senate election, which he lost to Democrat Elissa Slotkin, was stolen from him after first conceding the race. Rogers was reported in November 2025 to have said at events that a single van carrying fraudulent ballots in Detroit cost him the race against Slotkin.

“The guy … I’m running against insinuates that he didn’t actually lose,” El-Sayed said to Kristen Welker. “That’s the guy I’m running against right now.”

A recent New York Times and Siena University poll found Democratic Senate candidates leading in Alaska, Ohio and Texas — states Trump won by double digits in 2024. The same poll showed El-Sayed leading Rogers by five points. The Cook Political Report revised its predictions on Tuesday and declared that “A Senate Majority is Squarely in Democrats’ Sights.”