Nearly a Third of El-Sayed's X Reposters Are Based Abroad, More Than Twice Rogers' Share

Nearly a third of the X accounts reposting Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed's top posts are based outside the United States, according to a sampling of the Senate race that commentator Eyal Yakoby shared Wednesday. For Republican Mike Rogers, the share is 13%.

The chart covers all seven Senate races rated toss-ups. In six of them, the Democrat's reposters were more likely to be based abroad, from 1.6 times as likely in Maine to 3.7 times in Ohio. Iowa was the one exception: Republican Ashley Hinson's reposters were slightly more foreign, 10% to 9%.

How the count works

The method is spelled out in the chart's footnote. For each candidate, it took the 25 most-viewed posts on X from July 23 to Oct. 22 (Aug. 5 to Oct. 20 for El-Sayed), randomly sampled up to 200 reposters per post, and checked where X says each account is based. The chart does not name who ran the analysis.

We checked the math against the raw counts in that footnote, and it holds. Of El-Sayed's 4,354 sampled reposters, 1,321 were based abroad, or 30.3%. Of Rogers' 4,332, it was 556, or 12.8%. Across all seven races, 15.6% of Democrats' sampled reposters were based abroad, about double the 7.4% for Republicans.

Replies tell the same story. In Michigan, 13.3% of sampled replies backing El-Sayed came from abroad, nearly three times the 4.7% backing Rogers.

Why a foreign crowd matters

Reposts help decide what X shows to more people. A crowd from overseas can make a candidate look more popular at home than he really is. People in other countries can't vote in Michigan, but they can shape what Michigan voters see in their feeds.

A state race shouldn't draw that kind of crowd. A July study of 125,747 X accounts, Digital Borders, found the foreign share tracks how much the wider world cares about a subject. A state governor's crowd was 4.6% based abroad. "Israel," the presidency and tariffs drew the largest foreign crowds. At 30%, El-Sayed's reposters look more like a global cause than a Michigan Senate race.

Bots on both sides

Location is not the only warning sign. The Combat Antisemitism Movement's research center ran a bot model on 9,032 accounts amplifying El-Sayed's most-shared posts and flagged 33.1% as showing strong signs of being bots, fake profiles or inauthentic accounts. Of those 9,032 accounts, 15.2% were created this year.

To be fair, the group ran the same test on Rogers and flagged 34.3% of his amplifiers. Fake accounts swarm both men. Where the two crowds split is geography: El-Sayed's is far more likely to be based abroad.

A few caveats. This is a sample, not a full count, and X's location signals can be thrown off by travel or VPNs. But the pattern runs the same direction in six of seven races, and it is widest in Michigan.

Election Day is Tuesday. Before you take a candidate's online wave as Michigan's, check where it's coming from.