The results of the primary elections held on Tuesday have set the stage for the U.S. Senate race in Michigan, with both Democratic U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin and former Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers advancing after defeating their opponents in the primaries.

Slotkin,  a resident of Holly, decisively won the Democratic primary race against Hill Harper, securing 76 percent of the votes. Meanwhile, Rogers, supported by former President Trump, achieved an easy victory over three other opponents, garnering 552,488 votes, more than 63 percent of the Republican votes, far ahead of his closest competitor, former U.S. Rep. Justin Amish from Grand Rapids, who received 131,850 votes (15.21 percent).

Slotkin, supported by the pro-Israeli lobby (AIPAC), will face Rogers on November 5 to determine the successor to retiring Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow. The race for Stabenow’s seat is expected to be pivotal in determining which party will control the U.S. Senate next year.

Each of the 50 U.S. states has two senators, with Michigan represented by Democratic Senators Stabenow and Gary Peters.  U.S. Senators are elected for six-year terms and the Democrats narrowly control the 100-member body 51 to 49.

The primary election results showed Slotkin receiving more than 709,000 votes compared to approximately 221,000 votes for Harper, an African American actor, author and Detroit-based small business owner who garnered about 24 percent of the Democratic voters’ support.

Harper was the first U.S. Senate candidate nationwide to call for ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and who rejected a $20 million offer from the Zionist lobby to withdraw from the senate race and instead run against U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib to ensure Slotkin’s victory. Slotkin had supported the passage of a law in the Capitol in recent months that prohibits the U.S. State Department from relying on Palestinian Health Ministry data on war casualties in the occupied territories, as well as another law targeting International Criminal Court judges who accuse Israel of committing war crimes against the Palestinian people.

Slotkin, who has received record campaign funding exceeding $24 million, mostly from pro-Israel PACs, promised to be a “principled leader” who aims to unify the divided political environment within the Democratic party if she wins the U.S. Senate race this fall.

At her victory celebration held at the St. Regis hotel in Detroit, following the announcement of the election results on Tuesday evening, she told the crowd that “everyone across our state who is tired of division and chaos, give me your votes.” She urged Michigan residents “who believe that our country deserves better policies than the current ones” to support her in November.

“My message is simple: join us,” she said during the event, which was attended by Senator Stabenow. “…The future course of the U.S. Senate depends on this seat.”

Amid boos, Slotkin compared herself to Rogers, saying that Republican Party candidates are “busy waging cultural wars in every part of our lives instead of helping people.”

According to preliminary figures, the total number of voters in the Democratic primary was about 931,000, compared to around 877,000 in the Republican primary. The total number of voters in Tuesday’s election across the state was nearly 2 million, compared to 2.5 million votes in the August 2020 primaries.

On the Republican side, Rogers, the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, led the primary race with nearly 554,000 votes, compared to 137,000 votes for Amash (15.5 percent), 106,000 votes for physician Sherry O’Donnell (12 percent) and about 80,000 votes for businessman Sandy Pensler (9 percent), who had previously announced his withdrawal from the race and endorsed Rogers.

Despite the Republicans’ failure to win either of Michigan’s U.S. Senate seats since 1994, the Republican Party is betting this time on Rogers’ chances to defeat Slotkin, according to Senator Steve Daines of Montana, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

“We deliberately supported candidates early on, then got President Trump’s endorsement for our candidates,” Daines said,  noting that the Democratic side spent about $3.4 million on negative ads, attacking Rogers for his role in the 2012 Benghazi attack investigation.

For his part, Rogers addressed a crowd of supporters at a restaurant near Lake Orion in Oakland County, minutes after his victory was announced on Tuesday night. He said that the 2024 election is the most important election of his life.

“Either we change things for the better and get Michigan back on the right track, or we let the Democrats take us to a place no one wants to live in,” he said.

Rogers told the media that Slotkin is ahead of him by two percentage points in current polls.

“As the general election race begins over the next three months, once people get to know who we are, how we govern and what we’ve accomplished when we were there (in office) and what our solutions are, we will close this gap,” he said.