PITIFUL/INACCURATE: A new poll had the hopeful ahead!

THURSDAY, AUGUST 20, 2026

Unless you were watching The Five: Another day, another poll—though of course, it's only one poll.   

The new Michigan poll is only one poll. But here's what the new poll says:   

SHOCK POLL: El-Sayed Opens Up 7-Point Lead Over GOP Rival After Recent Data Showed Him Trailing   

Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed (D) came ahead with a healthy lead on his opponent Republican Mike Rogers in the latest polling following recent surveys showing a much closer race.

According to polling from Susquehanna released on Wednesday, El-Sayed is polling at 46% while Rogers is seven points behind at 39%.   

Other recent polling has shown a much closer race. A Fox News survey had Rogers leading El-Sayed at 51%-47%...

Last week, we took note of that Fox News poll. The new poll from Susquehanna has El-Sayed up by seven. 

Susquehanna Polling and Research has often been praised for its work in the past. That, of course, doesn't mean that this new poll has to be accurate. 

Is El-Sayed actually leading Rogers at this point? There's no way to know for sure! We do know that we all should feel sorry for the messenger children of the Fox News Channel, who found themselves forced to go deep into the blarney on the day that new survey appeared.  

Friends, is there anything Dana Perino won't say at this point? Surrounded by a gang of spear-chuckers, she was assigned the unlovely task of leading the second pseudo-discussion on yesterday's edition of The Five.  

Their mission, should the panelists choose to accept it:

Convince the largest audience in all of American "cable news" that El-Sayed's efforts are coming undone. 

Perino was hosting the segment. Because there's nothing she won't read from prompter for pay, she wittily started with this:  

PERINO (8/19/26): So he's Chucky [?] mission overboard! 

Chuck Schumer sure sounds like he's already hedging his bets on far-left Abdul El-Sayed, the candidate he did not back in the primary, telling the Washington Post [text appears on the screen]:

"A path to winning back the Senate clearly goes through Michigan, but we have a whole bunch of different paths." 

Inevitably, a witty Fox chyron said this: 

SCHUMER CHUCKS EL-SAYED  

With Perino politely reciting, that's what millions of viewers were told. 

Having said that, hold on! Did that statement really make it sound like Schumer has given up on the Michigan Senate race? As the segment proceeded, the other children agreed to pretend that it did. 

It didn't quite sound that way to us. When we went to the Washington Post report in question, this is the larger passage we found:   

Backlash in Michigan complicates Democrats’ road to retaking the Senate

[...]

Schumer said he was confident El-Sayed would win, citing the enthusiasm of his supporters. Still, Schumer and J.B. Poersch, the president of Senate Majority PAC, the lead Democratic super PAC in Senate races, both disputed that Democrats had no shot at retaking the majority without Michigan.

“A path to winning back the Senate clearly goes through Michigan, but we have a whole bunch of different paths,” Schumer said.  

We don't know what Schumer actually thinks, but that's the actual Post report about what he actually said. He may even believe, as some observers may be coming to do, that Democratic candidates suddenly seem to be alive in an unexpected number of traditional red states. 

(That would include some Independent candidates who would caucus with Democrats.) 

We don't know what Schumer thinks, but that's what Schumer said. Unless you were watching The Five, where Dana Perino was reading text designed to please Fox viewers.

Increasingly, we're struck by the things Perino seems to be willing to do on The Five. In that opening volley, she pleasured viewers with the thought that it's all over in Michigan—did so on the very day when a poll arrived showing El-Sayed ahead by seven points! 

The new poll went unmentioned by Perino, but also by the day's other performers:   

The Five: Wednesday, August 19, 2026  
Emily Compagno: co-host, Outnumbered  
Harold Ford: increasingly hard to explain
Jesse Watters: host, Jesse Watters Primetime 
Dana Perino: co-host, The Five 
Tom Shillue: comedian

Her initial presentation hadn't seemed to make sense, but the other children played along as the segment continued. 

It fell to Harold Ford to say the following. Allegedly, he was sitting in the program's Democratic Party/non-MAGA chair. It fell to him to say this. 

PERINO: Harold Ford Jr., if Michigan is off the table, do the Senate Republicans breathe a little easier, even if they're having to spend a lot of money in Ohio and Texas?  

FORD: So, for the leader of the Democrats in the Senate to say that about Michigan, I think it gives a window, not only into his thinking, but I think some of the things Jesse said in his remarks about, his comments about, the swing vote there...  

Did Ford know what Schumer had actually said? Later, the persistently puzzling Emily Compagno improbably pitched in with this:

PERINO: Emily, Bernie Bros—and Bernie Sanders himself strikes again. And I imagine that Chuck Schumer doesn't want to be seeing him in the lunchroom.

COMPAGNO: It's so telling that he's not saying—Schumer's not saying, "OK, come on, guys! We can still win!" Or, "We can still win without Michigan." 

He's explaining how they can win without Michigan. So this is not sort of cheerleading to me. This is not championing, this is crisis management.  

In fairness, Compagno is a famous fast talker. We aren't sure if the word "or" was included in her initial jumble or not.

Either way, we have no idea what she meant, and neither did anyone else. It was "close enough for cable news work" on the day when that new poll appeared.

("I think they've already given up" on Michigan, Compagno eventually said.)

Regarding Perino, she advanced two other points to tell Fox viewers what Fox News wanted its viewers to hear:   

Additional points from Perino: 

1) A 20-year-old staffer for El Sayed had made a stupid remark on X. According to several panelists, this would surely be enough to doom the campaign all by itself 

2) Back in May, the candidate had "compared himself to Jesus."   

The silly remark by the 20-year-old is likely to affect as many as zero votes. The children were really reaching when they wailed about that.   

Regarding El-Sayed as Jesus, Perino voiced that claim as soon as she had finished pretending to report what Schumer had said. We're going to leave it to you to decide if El-Sayed had drawn some such comparison in some sort of troubling way.   

You can click here to see what The Five's viewers were shown. For a somewhat fuller presentation of the interview session in May, you can simply click this.   

As for yesterday's presentation, we would tell you this:   

Schumer had told the Washington Post that El Sayed is going to win. Also, a new poll had him up by seven points:

Unless you were watching The Five!

Tomorrow: Days of "socialism" (and what the Sam Hill is that?)