It was in the early morning hours last Wednesday that Abdul El-Sayed learned that he was the projected winner of the Michigan Democrat Senate primary, becoming his party's nominee.
The DSA-endorsed candidate's victory against Rep. Haley Stevens (MI-11) was far narrower than expected, with the numbers as of this writing showing him ahead by around 5,500 votes out of the roughly 1,500,000 cast. While a win is a win, the closeness of the race underscored how deep the divide is within the Michigan Democrat electorate.
Ahead of the primary, rumors swirled about possible Democrat defections in the general election should El-Sayed win the primary, some of which were confirmed soon after it was learned that he was victorious. Two days after the primary, El-Sayed's GOP opponent, Trump-backed former congressman Mike Rogers, moved to capitalize on the Democrat discontent in a purple state known for close races decided by just a few thousand votes.
SEE ALSO: The Democrats' El-Sayed Problem Just Got Real, and the Political Price Could Be Huge
It's been about a week and a half since the primary race was called, and we're already learning that El-Sayed's problems among a broad swath of voters in the Wolverine State are quite pronounced, with Rogers already over the 50 percent mark in the first post-primary general election matchup poll taken:
New - Senate poll - Michigan
— Political Polls (@PpollingNumbers) August 13, 2026
đź”´ Rogars 51%
🔵 El-Sayed 47%
Fox #A - RV - 8/10 pic.twitter.com/CfatxZxl7e
Notably, Rogers is getting some support from some of those disaffected Democrats and more support among independents:
Notable stat from the Fox News Michigan poll: 27% of non-DSA Democrats support Mike Rogers over El-Sayed.
— Josh Kraushaar (@JoshKraushaar) August 13, 2026
That's a level of cross-party support you rarely see these days.
Rogers up 5 over El-Sayed among indies.https://t.co/3vdVmANzTs
"El-Sayed is underperforming with Black voters, women and suburban voters compared with former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election," the Fox News poll also made clear.
CNN data guru Harry Enten emphasized how bad this poll was for El Sayed:
CNN Chief Data Analyst Harry Enten said in part to Kaitlan Collins on Thursday night about El-Sayed's underwater favorability in the new Fox News poll, "El-Sayed is significantly weaker than these other Democrats who are running, and I will also note, I went back, and I tried to find every single poll I could find at this point in previous Michigan Senate campaigns in the 21st century. I believe that El-Sayed being down by that 4-point margin, is the weakest that any Democrat has polled at this point in a Senate race this entire century."
Here he was talking about it again on Friday morning:
CNN: "I couldn’t think of another example where you actually had a Democratic candidate who was down at least four points…for this entire century, Abdul El-Sayed is the only one…Abdul El-Sayed breaking records in the ways that you don’t want to.” pic.twitter.com/TqPtuXbCtL
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 14, 2026
Something I thought about when reading these numbers was the comments I frequently see from people who believe these Fox News polls skew to the left. If that's the case, it's quite possible that El-Sayed is doing even worse than the poll suggests.
In any event, the general election campaign season is just getting started, and there is a lot of time for this thing to go one way or another. But I've gotta say that if you're a long-suffering Michigan Republican (the last GOP Senator from Michigan was Spencer Abraham, who served from 1995-2001), there's gotta be some hope bubbling up to the surface on this one.
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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