El-Sayed, who campaigned alongside prominent socialists, defeated the more moderate Haley Stevens.
Detroit — Abdul El-Sayed narrowly defeated four-term Congresswoman Haley Stevens in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary after campaigning alongside the country’s most prominent socialists on a platform of Medicare for all, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and cutting off U.S. aid to Israel.
While polls predicted an easy win for El-Sayed, the race remained too close to call more than twelve hours after the polls closed. El-Sayed had a lead of fewer than 15,000 votes with 96 percent of votes counted when the Associated Press finally called the race in his favor.
El-Sayed addressed supporters in the early hours of Wednesday morning before the race had officially been called. The crowd — comprising young people in keffiyeh scarves, social media influencers, and prominent national and state Democrats — had not diminished in size or enthusiasm, even after standing inside the Majestic Theater in downtown Detroit for hours.
“I want you to remind them that if we come through this, when we come through this, inshallah, that we’ll have taken $70 million on the chin and kept fighting back,” El-Sayed told his supporters, drawing enthusiastic cheers.
While he claims to speak for working people, El-Sayed, a public health official with a medical degree, overperformed in the more highly educated parts of the state. Stevens, meanwhile, performed better in more rural and less educated counties.
El-Sayed will take on Republican Mike Rogers in November’s general election. Rogers, who ran unopposed for the Republican nomination, also earned the GOP nomination in 2024 but lost to sitting Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin by 19,000 votes.
While El-Sayed has long rejected the “socialist” label, his apparent popularity among Michigan Democrats represents a victory for the newly ascendant far-left wing of the party. El-Sayed regularly campaigned alongside socialist movement leaders such as Senator Bernie Sanders, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and popular podcaster Hasan Piker. He received endorsements from radical progressives such as Representatives Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.
Stevens, who has represented Michigan’s 19th district since 2019, received support from establishment Democratic leaders in the state, including Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Democratic Senator Gary Peters, but ultimately couldn’t compete with El-Sayed’s out-of-state star power.
El-Sayed joins a spate of upstart candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America who recently prevailed in Democratic primaries in New York and Colorado. Melat Kiros, the DSA-backed candidate who recently defeated longtime incumbent Democrat Diana DeGette in Colorado, was in attendance at El-Sayed’s watch party.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who endorsed Stevens in the Michigan primary, has projected a welcoming attitude toward the newcomers, despite their threats to oust him from leadership.
“Being a big tent party is a strength, not a weakness,” Schumer said at a press conference on Tuesday when asked about the rise of the DSA.
“Abdul El-Sayed’s victory marks another devastating loss for Chuck Schumer in his civil war with Bernie Sanders as Democrats position Mike Rogers to defeat socialism’s newest standard-bearer in November,” Bernadette Breslin, the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s national press secretary, told National Review in a statement.
Speaking with National Review at El-Sayed’s campaign watch party on Tuesday night, Piker offered a message to the Democratic establishment.
“I think they need to start paying attention to the needs of the masses, whether it be on their demands to recalculate our allegiance to Israel, or whether it be our demands for Medicare for all, our demands for a more equitable future, where we spend money on our children rather than spend money blowing up children overseas,” Piker said.
While he ran on a far-left policy platform, El Sayed has been careful not to affiliate himself too closely with the DSA and has repeatedly insisted that he’s not a socialist. One of his campaign volunteers showed up to an event over the weekend in a DSA shirt but covered it with another shirt before going out to knock on doors.
The volunteer told National Review he doesn’t want his association with the DSA to be a “turn off instantly” when courting potential voters.
“I think it’s fine to attach [Democrats] to Democratic Socialism, but for a one-off interaction with people I’ve never met before [while canvassing], it might be better if I’m not showing that truth immediately,” he said.
On the campaign trail, National Review asked El-Sayed to clarify what parts of capitalism he likes, given his comments saying he believes in the economic system. While he made a brief effort to defend an aspect of capitalism, the bulk of his answer was a broader criticism of the prevailing economic system in the U.S.
“We live in corporatism, where we allow big corporations to move capital based on the interests of shareholders and a quarterly bottom line,” El-Sayed told National Review. “That seems to be less about efficiently allocating capital based on supply and demand — and more about maneuvering or manipulating financial markets in ways that are more about the best interests of the richest people rather than the enablement of the efficient allocation of capital.”
After a long and contentious campaign that pitted Michigan’s establishment against an insurgent left, it remains unclear whether the party will be able to unite around El-Sayed and vanquish Rogers. In the days leading up to the election, El-Sayed supporters as well as Stevens supporters told NR they were hesitant to vote for the other Democratic candidate should their preferred candidate lose the primary.
El-Sayed has polled poorly against Rogers compared with Stevens. He wasted no time on Wednesday morning in redirecting the energy of his supporters toward their new challenge, saying “Mike, by the time we are done with you, all of Michigan is going to know who you are.”