A funny thing happened on the way to the revolutionary square in Michigan last night. It turned out that Democrats in Michigan – and in Detroit in particular – redistributed the votes more equally than polls predicted.
Those surveys showed Abdul El-Sayed winning the party’s Senate nomination in a walkover. Instead, Haley Stevens ran a close enough election that it’s still too close to call this morning:
Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, the party’s most divisive and costly this year, was locked in a tight race ahead of a verdict on whether a progressive and socialist groundswell has reached a top political battleground.
The fight between Abdul El-Sayed, a former local public-health official, and four-term Rep. Haley Stevens in Tuesday’s primary is widely seen as a referendum on the party’s identity and how it can win more competitive elections.
The polls preceding this nearly binary contest all had El-Sayed winning by double digits over Stevens. Instead, the socialist candidate is barely up by a percentage point. What happened? For one thing, Stevens turned out to be far stronger in Detroit’s Wayne County than anyone expected:
Stevens was showing strength in Wayne County, which includes Detroit, where there are many Black Democratic voters. El-Sayed was competitive in Oakland County, a Detroit suburban area that is part of Stevens’s political base.
At the moment, Stevens is actually winning Wayne County, where most of the rest of the uncounted votes are at. The widget below will allow readers to drill down into county vote counts. About 91% of the precincts in Wayne County have reported now, and Stevens is running ahead of El-Sayed 51/46. A rough calculation suggests that 25,000 or more votes may still be left to count in Wayne County, while El-Sayed leads by 19,400 statewide. It’s still a long shot for Stevens, but then again, it’s been a long shot for her all along.
This speaks volumes about the appeal of the DSA in statewide contests. El-Sayed was perhaps the most effective socialist in this cycle, with far more polish and appeal than Francesca Hong has in neighboring Wisconsin. Stevens was not a particularly appealing establishment alternative either. And yet El-Sayed is struggling to close the deal in a primary he supposedly dominated for months.
El-Sayed will probably still win this nomination. But Democrats better take a big whiff of the aroma from this performance and start thinking about how the socialist brand will perform in general elections outside of deep-blue congressional districts.
Update: This may be an expensive lesson for Democrats who think Bernie Sanders is the party’s future:
The intense and expensive race pitted Democrats’ establishment and progressive wings against each other and drew more than $80 million in spending and sparked several personal attacks, which could make it more challenging for the winner to unite the party against former Rep. Mike Rogers, who was unopposed for the Republican nomination Tuesday.
El-Sayed had the backing of prominent progressive politicians, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Stevens had much of the party establishment behind her, including Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters.
U.S. policy on Israel became a defining issue in the race, as did the political power of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the role of corporate money in politics. El-Sayed, who has accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, criticized Stevens over her votes to continue funding Israel’s military and the roughly $30 million spent on her behalf by AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project.
Let’s not forget the millions poured into El-Sayed’s campaign by his father-in-law, whose connections to CAIR and ISNA will become general-election fodder if El-Sayed wins this nomination. How much of that money came from the unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation case of material support for terrorism?
Update: Perhaps Democrats might also get a whiff of how badly polling got skewed toward El-Sayed over the last few weeks. Pollsters missed this strength from Stevens, and if they missed that, guess what they’ll miss in general-election polling? Again?
Update: DDHQ has finally called the race for El-Sayed, but this was a lot messier than the socialists thought. And the clean-up will be worse, as I’ll detail in a later post.
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
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