The winner will replace outgoing U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat who first won election to that seat in 2000.

The Michigan race drew national attention as a major opportunity for Republicans to pick up a seat in the Senate, where Democrats currently hold a two-seat lead.

But regardless of the outcome in Michigan, Republicans are planned to take control of the Senate next year due to pickups in Ohio and West Virginia.

Voters who spoke with Bridge at the polls Tuesday said his preference for the Senate largely aligned with his choice in the presidential race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

Raymond Tadgerson, a 58-year-old Trump voter from Grand Ledge who works in sales, said he voted for Rogers as “the lesser of two evils.”

He didn’t exactly align with either candidate’s policy stances, he said, but ultimately felt that Rogers was more “economically focused,” while Slotkin was “more emotion-based.”

But Carrie DeJonghe, a 62-year-old Saline Township voter, said she backed Slotkin and Harris because of their support for women’s rights.

Slotkin is “very successful,” he said, noting her three tours of duty in Iraq as a CIA analyst. And Harris, he said, is “smart” and “compassionate.”

Open seat, drawn stroke

Experts have long viewed the Michigan Senate race as a tiebreaker that could help decide control of the upper chamber. Democrats have controlled both Michigan seats since Stabenow won election more than two decades ago.

Democrats pinned their hopes for her replacement on Slotkin, a Holly Democrat who has served in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2019 and has dominated fundraising since entering the Senate race.

Slotkin, who if elected would be the youngest woman in the Senate and only the second woman to represent Michigan in that chamber, is a former CIA analyst who later served in the administrations of former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, most recently serving as acting assistant secretary of defense for national security affairs.

He returned to his family’s Holly Farm after then-President Trump took office and launched his first campaign in Congress a year later, highlighting his work under Republican and Democratic presidents and promising bipartisanship.