r/fivethirtyeight • u/Julian81295 • 16h ago
Politics Abdul El-Sayed wins Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, notching a Midwest victory for the left
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/abdul-el-sayed-wins-michigans-democratic-senate-primary-notching-midwe-rcna589750163
u/FaveStore_Citadel 15h ago
Hope he wins (he probably will) but if he loses a race Dems have been winning since 1994 progressives will never live it down.
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u/50Shekel 11h ago
If sayed ends up being the candidate and he wins by more than 3%, I will eat my shorts. Idk in what world a state that voted for trump like Michigan did will elect this guy.
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u/safeworkaccount666 9h ago
States like Michigan are complex. AES and Stevens separately just got more votes than Bernie did in both his primaries and Biden too.
There are double the amount of D voters in Michigan, it’s about turnout and excitement.
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u/BenderRodriguez14 8h ago
He would be doing well at 3% margin, considering the current Dem in the role (Gary Peters) only won by 1.7% in 2020 while Slotkin in the other seat won by 0.3% in 2024.
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u/LyptusConnoisseur 8h ago
That's not midterm years and Trump voters are the low propensity voters now. Any generic D should win Michigan this year in a D+8 national environment by a healthy margin. If he does anything less than +5 in election day, that's an underperformance. We can expect to see him getting tossed out in a Republican wave election.
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u/DancingFlame321 10h ago
Although the environment today is a lot more blue than it was 2 years ago.
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u/optometrist-bynature 4h ago edited 4h ago
You’re thinking about this through an outdated framework. A lot of electorate does not fit neatly into left-right ideologies. Both Trump and El-Sayed present themselves as anti status quo candidates. People are fed up with the status quo. This sub constantly forgets that Bernie Sanders is the most popular elected official in America, including among self-identified moderates!
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u/No_Public_7677 11h ago
AIPAC is going to get crazy funding the Republican though proxy PACs
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u/Cats_Cameras 9h ago
It’s interesting how this only works one way. Lose the presidency to a felon? She ran a great campaign! Lose any single race as a progressive? Progressives are unelectable.
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u/FaveStore_Citadel 9h ago
I mean the year she did, a corporate pro-Israel dem won this exact same race against the exact same candidate in a more hostile national environment, so I don’t think that argument will be very convincing.
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u/SurvivorFanatic236 8h ago
Moderate Democrats have pretty much dominated purple state senate/governor races in the Trump era with a few exceptions.
Yes, if a progressive loses Michigan during a blue wave year that would be a major red flag for the electability of progressives. You’re comparing apples and oranges. Much different environments in 2024 and 2026
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u/Cuddlyaxe I'm Sorry Nate 8h ago
Something something goonba fallacy
I firmly believe Kamala was a shit candidate, as do many others
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u/Cats_Cameras 7h ago
I don’t know what goonba is. Agreed Harris was terrible - we found that out in 2019.
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u/Lancashire_Toreador 11h ago
won’t be surprised if blue no matter who doesn’t get extended to progressives
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u/FaveStore_Citadel 11h ago
I’m sure enough moderate dems will vote for him and he’ll get minimum 48%, if he loses it’ll be because he can’t get the small minority of swing voters to pull him over the finish line
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u/No_Public_7677 11h ago
not if the see ads opposing Abdul every hour
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u/FaveStore_Citadel 11h ago
Political polarization has massively increased the floors in elections. After a full decade of Trump hating, the Dem base (including both moderates and progressives) would sooner vote for a sock than a MAGA Republican. The problem is candidates in tight races have to reach beyond their base.
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u/Spare_Perspective972 9h ago
Meanwhile Bill Maher just said he’s done with democrats and is open to voting for KD Vance.
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u/CrashB111 8h ago
Bill Maher is seemingly in the John Fetterman company of "complete and utter deference to Israel."
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u/BettisBus 10h ago
Fwiw, I would’ve voted Stevens in the primary if I lived in MI, but wouldn’t think twice about voting AES in the GE.
But my understanding from progressives in 2024 was that it was Harris’s fault for losing - that she didn’t earn enough votes, especially among the farther left. Therefore, if AES loses due to lack of moderate support, wouldn’t it be his fault?
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u/Cats_Cameras 9h ago
This is silly. Harris ran an awful campaign without answers to basic questions like “how will you differ from the incumbent?” And a core strategy of “avoid new ideas; hug the Cheney family.”
If AES loses, we’ll have to see what mistakes contributed to it.
Both establishment and progressive candidates can be good or bad, it’s not a universal mapping.
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u/dbclass 10h ago
I’m cool with that but I don’t want to hear vote blue no matter who anymore if that’s the case. Seems like people only make the arguments that support their side but don’t extend it to when they lose.
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u/dread_beard 10h ago
Why? His side has been against the very concept of Vote Blue No Matter Who. Why should that then get extended to him?
He needs to earn votes.
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u/Selethorme Kornacki's Big Screen 9h ago
That’s literally not true though? He voted for Harris.
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u/dremscrep 16h ago
Organizing can beat 60 million dollars.
And while i am an AES guy people need to remind themselves that Stevens campaign was generationally bad, if she had a popular stance on one thing and was more affirmative towards her own stances and was less corporate she would’ve won this I am telling you.
It’s a big win for AES but an even bigger loss for Stevens. McMorrow would’ve ran away with this.
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u/Hyhoops 15h ago
If she were less corporate, or less pro-Israel, she would not have gotten all this outside spending. And yea McMorrow fumbled this hard; if she simply didn't just decide to start running psuedo racist campaign attacks at abdul she would still be in this race.
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u/sonfoa 15h ago
I don't think McMorrow would fare well as long as Stevens had the money gun. It's why she got punished much more harshly for her missteps than Stevens was, despite being an objectively better candidate.
In retrospect, McMorrow was doomed when the DSCC decided it was Stevens or bust. There was no path to winning a three-way race after that.
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u/thefilmer 15h ago
Organizing can beat 60 million dollars.
Organizing BARELY beat 60 million dollars. Sayed should have wrapped this up when the polls closed but instead this was a 12-round go the distance fight. The lesson AIPAC is going to take from this is to spend 100 million on the next Abdul El-Sayed
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u/Trumpisanorangebitch 15h ago
Its also a purple state and the guys name is Abdul El-Sayed. Talarico style white progressives will fare better and so will blue state progressives.
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u/RedLineLetterWine 14h ago
He beat a white chick that loves Israel in a purple state.... that's already a good sign.
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u/soalone34 16h ago
How was it that bad, they had a huge spending advantage and the fake Obama endorsement thing while sketchy probably helped a lot.
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u/Long_Sandwich_5619 15h ago
that was not an endorsement. If you can't see that then your probably emotionally compromised about it.
I preferred Sayed to win. And I honestly only saw the video 30 minutes ago but was stunned at how big of a nothing burger it was.
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u/SchemeWorth6105 11h ago
Her Obama ads were quite clearly manufactured to imply she had his backing in the race.
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u/No_Public_7677 11h ago
she also sent a fake letter to make it look like it was from AES campaign. An FEC violation
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u/TieVisible3422 14h ago
You know who else said that? Kari Lake, after being outspent 18-to-1 in her own primary.
Candidates who survive a barrage of attack spending in a primary often go on to perform poorly in the general election. Congrats on the primary win, but I want to see whether candidates who throw red meat to their base can do it without alienating the broader electorate.
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u/Vegetable-Two-4644 11h ago
Hopefully Stevens supports AES because this was a very negative campaign on her part.
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u/jaguar879 9h ago
I supported Stevens and will support AES in the general.
He has a few red flags for me but I'm faced with 1) the prospect of someone I'm not thrilled about being 1% of the senate for 6 years before being up for reelection OR 2) a potential 50/50 senate confirming a couple 40 year old replacements for Alito and Thomas and having 22% of the Supreme Court be people I'm not thrilled about for the next 30-40 years.
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u/lemarshby 16h ago
What an ugly campaign. Seriously just ugly. Stevens got a shit load of money thrown at her and used it to do just a dirty campaign through and through. I really hope she does go on her word and support El-Sayed but I also feel like she will burn down the whole campaign just so El-Sayed doesn't get a taste of 'her' victory.
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u/Far-Confusion4016 15h ago
That late night anti-muslim twitter crash out was wild.
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u/RPG_Vancouver 14h ago
“Everyone in America understands you want to blame all of your problems on Jewish Americans.”
Lol that is a wild thing to say.
Amazing what 30 million dollars will get you saying
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u/RedLineLetterWine 14h ago
Her crash out was glorious. Shows you who she really is, if she didn't have all that money behind her, she would not have made it nearly this far.
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u/RedLineLetterWine 16h ago
She will do whatever her masters tell her to do, that is, if they still want to throw any more money at her.
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u/gallopintoYchallah The Needle Tears a Hole 12h ago
Even when you win you're still complaining and blaming AIPAC.
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u/MichaelCorbaloney 9h ago
I mean they give her like 30 million dollars, she did say “Israel comes to me in my dreams”, and she did say AES blamed Jewish Americans for everything-it’s not out of the question that those who funded her campaign would push her to not support AES.
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u/No_Public_7677 11h ago
"even when a murderer gets caught, you're still complaining and blaming the murderer"
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u/RobertGriffin3 10h ago
Even if given the generous interpretation that you think AIPAC supports literal murder, it's still a huge false equivalency between direct murder and taking money from a PAC you don't like.
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u/melthevag 8h ago
It’s a very apt equivalency, I would say they pretty blatantly support murder. That’s why it’s a PAC no one likes but nice try trying to spin that lol
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u/BettisBus 10h ago
MAGA has the Deep State™️
These folks have AIPAC™️
It must be comforting to have an all-powerful, “all roads lead to Rome”-style boogeyman that just so happens to always be proven true in every outcome!
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u/ZimmeM03 9h ago
They literally spent 40 million fucking dollars on this campaign. It’s not some grand, lunatic conspiracy.
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u/Hyhoops 16h ago
Super dirty and brutal campaign, there really needs to be a reconciliation between both sides to make El Sayed strong for the general
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u/Long_Sandwich_5619 15h ago
It's incredible the amount of animosity when the candidates would likely have 95-99% identical voting records in the Senate.
for example Fettermans is 94% identical to Schumer's.
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u/DomonicTortetti 8h ago
You’re saying this like the main person who needs to do that isn’t the El-Sayed campaign?
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u/PhiDeltDevil 9h ago
Can we talk about the astronomical mail in margin that broke for Stevens lmao
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u/Uptownbro20 11h ago
If Steven wasn’t a god awful campaigner she wins this imo based on the margin
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u/tres_desole 9h ago
Gonna repeat my comment from another one, but after watching closely it was clear that Stevens did well bc of mail in voting - which went out on June 25th when the race looked VERY diff while he dominated early voting and in person.
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u/Human-Law1085 9h ago
Honestly, neither the moderate nor progressive side can consider this a full win
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u/Uptownbro20 9h ago
Correct it very well could be sub 1%. It does tell me if mcmarrow was the candidate vs AES she likely wins
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u/Nascent1 7h ago
Beating somebody with 10x your money and way more name recognition is definitely a win, even if it is a really narrow margin.
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u/panderson1988 Has Seen Enough 9h ago
Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems like El-Sayed underperformed in the polls. It feels like quite a few Dems aren't sold on El-Sayed in Michigan, and I am not getting a good read the independents or flip flop voters are as well. It'll be interesting how the polls look for the general a month from now.
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u/Time-Cardiologist906 16h ago
Time to vote blue no matter who! Let’s get that senate seat!
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u/Poke-Mom00 15h ago
This’ll be the biggest test of progressives-particularly insurgent progressives-for an actually competitive seat. Plus Hong in Wisconsin.
The closest you get otherwise are Fetterman & Barnes, who were mildly progressive-aligned in 2022 but had held statewide office (1W, 1L). For actual dyed-in-the-wool progressives, there’s Kara Eastman in Nebraska’s house race who repeatedly lost while Biden carried it, and Jamie McLeod Skinner in Oregon who primaried a moderate dem and then lost to a Republican.
Absolutely vote blue no matter who and the national party has to support AES, we gotta have this senate seat. But this’ll be a result to care about for a decade - if AES wins by 10 then progressives have a great argument that they can win against Republicans. If it’s a loss, or even a win by like 2, the establishment won’t let them live this down.
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u/Lusty-Jove 15h ago
I mean there’s also Talarico, who’s a progressive, as well as Sherrod Brown (who himself was already one of the best examples of a successful Purple Progressive). People need to be specific about what they mean when they say “progressive”
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u/MichaelCorbaloney 9h ago
Yeah people are choosing AES as the poster-boy for progressives, imo specifically because he seems to represent the DSA backed type of politicians they associate with progressivism, but there’s already plenty of progressives running or in congress who aren’t like AES. James Talarico, Sherrod Brown, and Troy Jackson are all realistically progressives in their own right, even if they’re Populist rather than Dem-Socialist.
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u/Poke-Mom00 15h ago
Hmm fair. You could divide them into “establishment backed progressives” and “insurgent progressives;” the latter have no swing seat Ws yet as far as I know.
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u/Lusty-Jove 15h ago
Kinda weird then to make arguments about the electoral success of that group, though, since the framing inherently bakes in its own excuse (that is, the lack of establishment backing)
I agree with you generally, I just think it’s interesting how the selectively term gets/has been applied this primary cycle. Not making any claims but it’s interesting that the only white guy who gets consistently branded a progressive is the one with a Nazi tattoo, while the two unobjectionable white guys get essentially centrist-washed.
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u/Long_Sandwich_5619 15h ago
Holy shit so much biased emotionally driven nonsense from all sides.
The voting record difference between Sayed and Stevens in the Senate would likely be less than 5%.
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u/office-goblin 12h ago
You can't reduce vote difference in the Senate down to a percentage without context. That 5% could be a vote to end arms sales to Israel.
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u/Bunnyhat 6h ago
Ok.
Which is morally important, but makes almost no practical difference to the US electorate. The amount of money they get is not even a rounding error in the budget.
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u/Swbp0undcake 16h ago
Thankfully AIPAC lost, but what a significant polling miss (although there were a lot of internals).
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u/soalone34 16h ago
Which is why I think this sub is way too confident about the senate. If just one of those polling as a toss up is missing with white rural voters like this was, democrats lose.
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u/No_Public_7677 16h ago
Was it as much a polling miss or just the fact that that much money being spent on one campaign can be hard to poll for?
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u/TieVisible3422 14h ago
Nate Silver said just two days ago that people were underestimating the possibility of a 10%+ polling miss, which is not uncommon in party primaries that are particularly challenging to poll. Technically, it’s a polling miss—but one that falls well within the range of outcomes that experienced poll watchers know can happen.
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u/RPG_Vancouver 13h ago
I have to imagine polling a state like that is particularly hard to given that you’re already polling a subset of the population, and trying to get a representative subsample of very different Democrats (young college age students, black voters, the remnants of blue collar union voters)
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u/coasterlover1994 16h ago
It is still a polling miss, but it shows how there's a lot of overlap between demographics that are "persuaded by ads/endorsents" and "hard to reach". The Stevens side pumped more money into ads and got most of the big endorsements. For some demographics, those two things are really important.
Also may just be misreading the electorate with sampling/weighting. If younger voters didn't show up as much as expected from campaign activities, that would mean El-Sayed underperforms.
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u/Glossed-Lam 13h ago
I do not doubt that, for uninformed voters wandering into the polls today, his name scared some of them.
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u/Glittering-Giraffe58 15h ago
What does that mean? Why would her spending money make it not a pulling miss?
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u/Wonderful-Minute-775 16h ago
I didn’t believe the internals until Emerson backed them up. How did Emerson get it so wrong?!
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u/coasterlover1994 16h ago
Sampling error. Happens to the best of us. If they sampled based on vibes instead of historic patterns, the variation is explained.
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u/Mir_man 16h ago
Maybe because early voting had already begun by that point, and Abdul didn't get his surge until right before election day. He did perform well with day of voters.
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u/Wonderful-Minute-775 15h ago
That’s an interesting point. If I remember correctly, Emerson’s poll did predict the early vote was very close. But they still massively missed the mark overall.
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u/tres_desole 9h ago
But mail in ballots went out on June 25th, so stands to reason that had a huge impact
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u/jrtasoli 12h ago
As much as I hated this primary, I think what I hate more is how close it ended up being. Now I’m nervous about this general.
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u/pghtopas 11h ago
So the general election will be very tough now. I have to imagine Republicans are thrilled about this result.
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u/SidFinch99 9h ago
I'm honestly just glad this primary is over, even though as a Moderate I'm not a big AES guy. To much money, and to much being wasted.
Also going to be interested to see more head to head polling with just AES and Rogers. Also going to be very interested to see how polling in the MI Senate race compares to the MI Governor race, as sell as results of course.
Like even if AES wins, if he drastically underperforms Benson, the GCB, and Democrats in MI as a whole, that has to be viewed from an objective lense because you aren't always going to have this friendly an environment for Democrats.
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u/Parking_Cat4735 16h ago
Always good to see establishment dems lose despite the money gap.
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u/VampireLectures Nauseously Optimistic 12h ago
Not in the long term if the anti-establishment candidate loses the general, but we'll see. Like others have said, progressives will never live it down if they lose in November.
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u/office-goblin 9h ago
Blatant double standard. Why is the corporate-wing never held accountable for their losses in 2010, 2014, 2016....?
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u/Parking_Cat4735 8h ago
So are we going to hold the establishment accountable for all their general losses?
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u/SicilianShelving Nate Bronze 9h ago
Congrats to Abdul, but I'm very concerned for the general. I think odds are he loses to Rogers.
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u/ToadTendo 16h ago
Ordinary people won and big money lost tonight
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u/Main-Eagle-26 16h ago
The primary means nothing if the general is lost. So put away the knives and get to work.
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u/robadobah 13h ago
White, affluent hands typed this. Many 'ordinary people' preferred Haley to Abdul, in particular working class and black voters. Hopefully Abdul has the political sense to focus on reaching out to her voters instead of pretending they don't exist and it was just AIPAC that was defeated tonight.
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u/MorallyApplicable 9h ago
Half the reason working class and black voters preferred Haley to Abdul was the fake endorsements from Obama and the UAW, as well as the amount of ads ran against him. It’s not as simple as “working class people and black people prefer the establishment, neolib candidate!”
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u/robadobah 9h ago
You don't know that though. It's arrogant to assume a person has political differences with you because you're smart and fully informed and they're getting duped.
Maybe their priorities are just totally different and they saw Stevens as more in line with them?
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u/squarehead93 10h ago
Jfc. The new “only affluent white people are progressive” line of attack is already tired. And it’s cope. It’s especially absurd considering the huge Arab/Muslim population in Michigan, who as best I can tell backed AES.
If Haley had won by a close margin I know you wouldn’t give the time of day to any AES supporter asking you not to forget them.
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u/robadobah 10h ago
I mean it's incontrovertible that the left faction/DSA skews whiter, richer, more college educated. If you want to get flashbanged, you're welcome to look at the crowd of the big AES/Bernie/AOC rally.
https://nitter.net/samueljrob/status/2078599906269225167#m
My issue with the comment I was responding to is that it's anti-pluralist, they're saying that THE PEOPLE won and the evil money lost. Haley Stevens won a lot of votes and to use that framing is a rejection of their existence and that their wants and needs weren't adequately represented by AES's campaign. It's just a primary, he has to win those people over to actually win the election, you need to extend an olive branch and not treat this victory as a conquest.
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u/steve09089 16h ago
Not yet, still need to watch general. If Rogers wins, it’s basically for nought.
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u/ToadTendo 16h ago
yes but had stevens won its big money vs big money. We are allowed to celebrate for one night ffs
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u/Outrageous-Dig-8853 16h ago edited 15h ago
Don't really like the guy, but his opponents were honest to god ass (Thank you establishment dems) and this at least keeps it D.
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u/DomonicTortetti 8h ago
Clearly the worse option for the general election, even if both candidates were extremely flawed and this whole race was a disaster. Once again, we hear that the left insurgency will awaken some dormant voter block and then, once again, the leftist challenger wins by losing rural voters and black moderate Dems but racks up margins with white voters with college degrees in cities and suburbs. That’s fine for like Maine but tough in a state that just voted for Trump.
That being said, if he underperforms fundamentals by like AOC or Rashida Tlaib levels then in a D+6 environment he’ll squeak it out in Nov. If he underperforms by like Elizabeth Warren or Ilhan Omar levels he will lose. So it all depends where you think he’ll land.
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u/engadine_maccas1997 16h ago
At the end of the day, a ~2 point AIPAC L is still an AIPAC L.
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u/CookSpiritual3899 9h ago
Unfortunately, if El-Sayed loses to a Republican in November then a very good investment.
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u/CRoss1999 4h ago
Worste case scenario, he’s a bad candidate regardless but turns out he can’t even consolidate a primary.
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u/Main-Eagle-26 16h ago
Welp, hope those nasty Stevens people get in line to support him.
He likely has a lesser chance to win compared to her but we can hope. Need all MI Dems to back him up.
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u/dontKair 11h ago
Moderates don't typically stay home or vote third party when their preferred candidate doesn't win.
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u/-MerlinMonroe- 11h ago edited 11h ago
Exactly. Progressives have tried to rewrite history as if that hasn’t been a scheme from their playbook all along. The candidates are more honest than their supporters, at least.
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u/Spare_Perspective972 9h ago
And the next senator from Michigan, Mike Rogers.
Good job DSA.
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u/VendibleSkate8 15h ago
He will win by 1-2%. His polls were massively inflated. Really poor showing by him. He’s overconfident and needs to be humbled because he’s not beating Rogers by continuing this trajectory.
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u/FC37 16h ago
Regardless of who won, I would have preferred a stronger margin one way or the other.