August 5 2026 - 6:30pm
One of the most high-profile races of the 2026 primary season is now over. In a contest that may help decide control of Congress later this year, Left-wing candidate Abdul El-Sayed bested Congresswoman Haley Stevens for the Democratic Party Senate nomination. But El-Sayed’s win was far narrower than pre-election polling suggested, and the results show a candidate who has a long way to go to win this November.
In theory, Michigan should be Democrats’ race to lose. Though it is a perennial swing state in presidential elections, the party currently controls both of its Senate seats as well as the state Senate and several other major offices. Republicans nominated Mike Rogers, an election denier who has closely embraced President Trump. Nationally, the midterm environment leans in Democrats’ favor, the incumbent Republican president is deeply unpopular, and frustrated economic sentiments persist. Given all that, one would normally expect this to be a cakewalk for team blue.
However, El-Sayed is not a conventional candidate — and in fact there are several signs this race could be much closer than it should. As last night’s results show, his lead over Stevens was less than one percentage point (and fewer than 15,000 votes), a sign that the Democratic primary electorate was deeply divided.
Perhaps more concerning is the coalition El-Sayed rode to victory: he performed much better in counties that were wealthier and had higher levels of college attainment, while Stevens was more likely to win working-class counties. El-Sayed’s coalition mirrors that of other Left-wing candidates who have run this cycle, but it is starkly different from the electorate that will be voting in November. According to 2018 post-election data, fully 61% of Michigan voters did not have a college degree (and 49% were non-college whites), while 71% made under $100,000 a year. He also fared better in college towns and counties where the electorate skewed younger, but in 2018 the vast majority of voters (68%) were 45 and older.
Then there is the matter of a core demographic in both the Democratic Party and the state of Michigan: black voters. In the pre-election polling, Stevens led with black Michiganders by huge margins, and this dynamic played out in the results, too. She carried the top four counties with the largest percent of black residents (adjusted by citizen voting-age population). El-Sayed will have to work hard to repair some of the racial fault lines that had opened up by the end of the primary, especially given that low black turnout has doomed some Democrats in Michigan in the not-too-distant past.
Beyond the coalitional concerns, Republicans will spend heavily to paint El-Sayed as too extreme, and there will be plenty of fodder for them to work with. For instance, he has shown a reluctance to distance himself from or simply condemn Islamic extremism. After a man inspired by the terror group Hezbollah drove his car into Temple Israel, El-Sayed seemed to justify his actions by blaming the war in the Middle East and saying “hurt people hurt people”.
He later added that his team debated saying anything at all after the attack. Additionally, he has maintained a relationship with Amir Makled, a candidate for the University of Michigan Board of Regents, who has praised Hezbollah and referred to Israelis as “demons”. He has also campaigned multiple times with Hasan Piker, who has a controversial past of his own. Separately, El-Sayed has questioned whether Israel should be a Jewish state and suggested that pro-Israel Democrats are only supportive for financial reasons.
There are more practical obstacles standing before him as well. Heading into the election, El-Sayed has burned through much of his war chest and has less cash on hand ($2.6 million) than his Republican rival ($4.5 million). General election polling has also shown that Rogers fares better against El-Sayed than he did against Stevens, leading the newly crowned Democratic nominee by three points in the latest nonpartisan survey.
It’s still possible El-Sayed could win simply due to a favorable national environment. But there is a reason the major election handicappers consider this race a toss-up and not, say, North Carolina or Georgia — both swing states Trump also won by a narrow margin two years ago. And if El-Sayed loses, it could make Democratic dreams of re-taking the Senate just that: dreams.
