Updated November 5, 2026 at 11:16 AM EST
Midterms coverage: Live results | What to know | Stories around the country
Stay connected: NPR Politics Podcast | NPR Politics newsletter | NPR app
DETROIT — Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, whose campaign challenged the Democratic establishment and galvanized voters around eliminating the influence of corporate money in politics, has won the U.S. Senate election in Michigan, according to an Associated Press race call.
One of the most closely watched elections in the U.S., the race in Michigan tested how an antiestablishment candidate on the left would fare in a perennial Midwest battleground.
The 42-year-old former public health official defeated Republican former Congressman Mike Rogers by about 7 points and will be the first Muslim American to serve in the Senate.
Loading...
"Tonight, Michigan, we beat a machine and we proved once again just how big America really is because where else but in America can a doctor named Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, a child of immigrants raised by his father and his Daughter of the American Revolution stepmother get elected senator from America's greatest state?," El-Sayed told supporters early Wednesday at an Election Night party for Democrats in downtown Detroit.
El-Sayed is not a democratic socialist, unlike several candidates whose insurgent campaigns gained traction in primaries this cycle, though his campaign was backed by some of the biggest stars on the political left.
Harnessing anger over the cost of living and corruption, El-Sayed motivated young and infrequent voters by focusing on passing single-payer healthcare and curbing corporate and special interest money in politics.
El-Sayed's positions on Israel alienated some Jewish voters, including comments after a truck attack at a synagogue preschool in metro Detroit — for which he later offered an apology — and campaigning during the primary with controversial left-wing streamer Hasan Piker.
Those were among the dynamics during a heated primary contest that turned into a stand-in for many of the broader debates fueling the direction of the Democratic Party after two years in the political wilderness.
In the August Democratic primary, El-Sayed narrowly defeated Rep. Haley Stevens by about 1 percentage point of the vote, despite Michigan heavyweights like Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and retiring Sen. Gary Peters backing his opponent.
After the primary, nearly every elected Michigan Democrat swiftly rallied around El-Sayed.
In the closing days of the campaign, Stevens reversed course and announced she was endorsing Rogers, after initially saying she would support the Democratic ticket, underscoring the rocky path to uniting the Democratic coalition in Michigan.
By Election Day, the party did mostly coalesce around their nominee. While El-Sayed underperformed Elissa Slotkin, the Michigan Democrat elected to the Senate in 2024, in some of the most heavily Jewish precincts in Oakland County, it was far from enough to shift the race.
El-Sayed also consolidated support from Black voters, many of whom supported Stevens in the primary, with results showing Rogers actually lost Detroit by a wider margin than he did in 2024.
El-Sayed also juiced turnout among young voters in college towns and in the Arab American stronghold of Dearborn and flipped four counties that voted for Trump in 2024.
He improved over Vice President Kamala Harris' 2024 margins by double digits in several counties, including two in the Upper Peninsula. Still, he ran behind Michigan's Democratic nominee for governor, Jocelyn Benson, by about two points statewide.
During the campaign, El-Sayed criticized his opponent and other Republicans, including President Trump, for targeting him with Islamophobic rhetoric. Trump called him a "jihadist." Rogers focused his closing argument on painting El-Sayed as dangerous and un-American, accusing him without evidence of ties to terrorist groups.
"To all the kids who watched this last month, to all the parents who struggled to explain why the president openly mocked someone for their name or how they pray, let them know tomorrow that the bad guys lost," El-Sayed said after declaring victory.
At a polling place in Farmington Hills, Tuba Hasan said she usually brings her son with her to vote. Now that he is seven, he was in school this Election Day.
"But I wish he would have been here because then he would have been part of the history," she said. "It's also nice to see that while there is hateful rhetoric on the rise, you're also seeing more allies. It says something about the people of Michigan, saying that's not who we are as Michiganders, let alone it's not who we are as Americans."
Trump early on endorsed Rogers, who has embraced some of the president's false claims about widespread election fraud, despite previously condemning them, including after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Rogers, who served seven terms in Congress, lost his first bid for the Senate in 2024. As November neared, Rogers tried to distance himself from some of the president's policies, including the war in Iran.
El-Sayed, a Michigan native who ran the health departments in Wayne County and the city of Detroit, first arrived on the political stage in 2018 with an unsuccessful bid for governor.
Now as Democrats wrestle with their party's identity, El-Sayed has signaled that he intends to be a prominent voice in the party, especially given Michigan's prime position in the presidential nominating process for Democrats in 2028.
Copyright 2026 NPR
Loading...
