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| Abdul El Sayed by Molly Crabapple |
A Sense of Doubt blog post #4279 - El Sayed and the Blue Tsunami - It's a Happy Day of Great Relief in America
Abdul El-Sayed wins Michigan Senate race, set to become 1st Muslim U.S. senator
His victory came after a bitter campaign that ended with his Democratic primary rival, Haley Stevens, endorsing his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers.
Democrat Abdul El-Sayed has won one of the marquee battles of the 2026 midterms: the race to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters in Michigan.
El-Sayed, an unapologetic 42-year-old progressive and the son of Egyptian immigrants, will become America's first Muslim senator. He has pushed policies such as Medicare for All and ending U.S. military aid to Israel, and has been willing to confront his critics and his own party's establishment.
His victory over Republican candidate Mike Rogers came on a night that saw Democrats regain control of the U.S. Senate in a midterm blue wave that also saw the party win control of the House of Representatives.
"You took a chance on the unlikeliest of candidates," El-Sayed told a crowd of supporters in Detroit on Wednesday as he declared victory. "Thank you. This is all yours."
El-Sayed defeated Rogers, a 63-year-old former congressman who lost an extremely close Senate race to Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin two years ago, and who has since broken with President Trump on tariffs and the war in Iran.
The race was rocked by several controversies, with the biggest coming two days before the election. Rep. Haley Stevens, the Democrat El-Sayed narrowly defeated in the primary, endorsed Rogers after she worshipped with the GOP candidate at Perfecting Church in Detroit.
"Our Democratic nominee for Senate said I was no longer welcome in his campaign and that I should stay away," Stevens said in a video. "And he's right. And that's why I am endorsing Mike Rogers for the United States Senate today."
Stevens had said days earlier that she would vote for El-Sayed, and the two were due to appear together Sunday for the first time since August. That plan collapsed after she called on him to condemn an outside group's ad tying U.S. support for Israel to grocery prices. His campaign then asked her to stay away, NBC News reported. El-Sayed has stated he did not agree with the contents of the ad.
Defending her stance, Stevens told CNN on Sunday the decision was a "weight off my shoulders" and said she had decided to switch allegiances because El-Sayed had been getting "angrier and angrier" throughout the campaign.
When Stevens announced her change in support for Rogers, she maintained that she was "still a very proud Democrat." Michigan's Democratic Party chair, Curtis Hertel, fumed over the decision in a Sunday post on X, writing, "Congresswoman Stevens is not a current member of the Michigan Democratic Party, nor will she be in the future."
Trump told a rally in Iowa on Sunday that he'd "love" Stevens to join the Republican Party and said she'd been "very brave" to endorse Rogers.
Rep. Debbie Dingell, who helped arrange the event, told the AP before the endorsement that she had called it off. "I'm the one who pulled it because it had become way too distracting," she said.
"I would rather not distract from the key issues of this campaign," El-Sayed said Saturday. He attended a different Detroit church Sunday with Dingell and other Democrats, and did not address the dispute there, the AP reported.
On Sunday, El-Sayed spoke with reporters before a unity event with other Democrats and reacted to Stevens's endorsement, saying, "At the end of the day, I actually don't think about Haley Stevens."
"This is a state of 10 million people who deserve a lot better from their government. I'm a lot more focused on the 9,999,998 that are not the ones you guys are talking about," El-Sayed said, referring to Stevens and Rogers.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote on social media on Sunday that Stevens's reversal was a "despicable betrayal."
How controversial has the race been?
El-Sayed's background has made him the target of persistent attacks from Republicans, with Trump going so far as to call him a "jihadist" and accuse him of being "on the side of the terrorists."
Vice President JD Vance recently said El-Sayed had "zero attachment" to the United States. El-Sayed is a U.S. citizen who was born and raised in Michigan. Rogers has claimed, without evidence, that El-Sayed has supported the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the Arab world's oldest and most influential Islamist groups.
In a recent exchange at a town hall with a critic who asked him whether he denounced the Muslim Brotherhood, El-Sayed highlighted what he called the "implicit" suggestion in the question: the assumption that he'll have "dual loyalties" because of his faith.
"I'm not running to be a Muslim senator," he said. "I'm running for the U.S. Senate and happen to be Muslim."
After Trump referred to El-Sayed as "Mohammed" — his middle name — the Democrat responded in what has become his signature pugnacious style.
"I don't care how he pronounces my name," El-Sayed said during a rally in Grand Rapids on Oct. 25. "Because he can just go on and call me 'senator' after November. I will be Senator Mohamed to you, bro."
Meanwhile, El-Sayed has campaigned with Hasan Piker, a Marxist streamer whom other Democrats have called antisemitic and even anti-American.
"If perfectly inoffensive won elections, then Donald Trump would never have been president," El-Sayed said in April when reporters questioned his choice of allies.
An independent left-wing group affiliated with Piker's uncle, commentator Cenk Uygur, also recently released an ad linking U.S. support for Israel to high grocery prices. The ad shows two parents shopping for their kids' lunch items; the mom tells the dad to put a carton of eggs back on the shelf.
"They don't like eggs anymore?" the dad asks.
"No, they like eggs," the mom answers. "But we have to set that $7 aside for killing Palestinians."
Some Democrats and Republicans have urged El-Sayed to denounce the content of the ad rather than just distancing himself from it.
"That has nothing to do with our campaign," El-Sayed said of the ad. "It's certainly not what I want to be talking about right now."
Who is El-Sayed?
El-Sayed, 42, was born on Halloween 1984 in Rochester Hills, Mich. — a northern suburb of Detroit. His parents were immigrants from Egypt, and his first language was Arabic. He captained his high school's wrestling, football and lacrosse teams, then continued to play club lacrosse at the University of Michigan, where he majored in biology and political science.
El-Sayed went on to study medicine at Michigan, Oxford University (as a Rhodes Scholar) and Columbia University, where he received his MD. Before politics, he pursued a career in public health epidemiology as a tenure-track professor, and later led the Detroit health department.
In 2017, El-Sayed, then just 32, resigned as Detroit's health director to run for governor. He said at the time he was inspired by his work on the Flint water crisis. He was endorsed by prominent progressives — Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — but lost the Democratic primary to Gretchen Whitmer by more than 20 percentage points.
After a stint as Wayne County health director, El-Sayed decided to try again in 2026. He has since become the most prominent Democratic insurgent to channel left-wing disillusionment with politics and outrage over Israel's actions in Gaza to win his party's nomination in a state where more moderate candidates typically prevail.
His argument is that even in so-called purple states such as Michigan, Democrats have a better shot at success when they pick buzzy, big-swing progressives over safe, "electable" incrementalists.
Midterms 2026: How Democrats built a blue wave and won control of Congress
Trump wasn't on the ballot. But exit polls suggested he was top of mind for voters.
It was a blue wave big enough to become a blue tsunami.
On Tuesday, the Democratic Party shattered a series of decades-long Republican winning streaks, notched several historic firsts and flipped both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives as Americans in states and districts that voted to reelect President Trump just two years ago delivered a harsh judgment on the steep tariffs, rising gas prices, aggressive immigration raids and unresolved war in Iran that have so far dominated his second term.
"We didn't win this race by alienating our neighbors or shaming our neighbors or ridiculing our neighbors," Democrat James Talarico said after winning the Senate election in Texas. "We embodied a new kind of politics. A politics rooted in a deep love for our state, for our country and, most importantly, for all of our neighbors."
Votes were still being tallied and key races remained uncalled as Election Day came to an end. But as of 1 a.m. ET on Wednesday, when the last polls closed in Alaska, Democrats were projected to gain more than three dozen seats in the House and as many as nine seats in the Senate — far beyond the three and four seats, respectively, that they needed to retake each chamber. They were also on track to win the majority of governorships for the first time since 2011.
The list of milestones was long: The first Texas Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate since 1988 (Talarico). The first Latina ever elected governor of the Lone Star State (Gina Hinojosa). Kansas's first Democratic senator since the Great Depression (Adam Hamilton). The first Black woman governor in U.S. history (Georgia's Keisha Lance Bottoms). The first Democratic senator from South Carolina in decades (Annie Andrews). America's first Muslim senator (Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan). And what could be the largest Democratic House majority since 2008.
As a result, Trump will no longer enjoy complete Republican control of Congress. Starting in January, Democrats in the House and Senate will have the power to block parts of the president's agenda, reject his nominees, investigate his administration and even impeach him (again).
Historically, midterms tend to be backlash elections; a president's party almost always sheds House seats when voters return to the polls to rate his first two years in office. The average number lost since World War II? Twenty-six.
Yet some midterms are more momentous than others. In 2006, President George W. Bush's second midterm, Republicans lost 31 seats. In 2010, President Barack Obama's first midterm, Democrats lost 64 seats. And in 2018, Trump's first midterm, Republicans lost 42 seats.
This year, according to data journalist G. Elliott Morris, "Democrats have won the largest House popular vote victory for any party since 1974, when the Watergate scandal rocked Republicans to their core."
Here are four takeaways that help explain what happened in the 2026 midterms, and why.
Red state revolt
The most striking thing about this year's Democratic gains is that they came in some of the redder parts of the country.
Before Election Day, the GOP's majorities on Capitol Hill were already narrow — a dynamic that usually limits the opposing party's pickup opportunities. A Republican-friendly 2026 Senate map and an unprecedented mid-decade GOP redistricting push further reduced the number of easy targets for Democrats.
Yet high prices, an unpopular war and Trump's falling approval ratings gave Democrats a chance to compete in places where they haven't prevailed in years — or, in some cases, decades.
Strong nominees went on to capitalize Tuesday night.
In Texas, Talarico, a 37-year-old state lawmaker and former seminarian, defeated Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, a MAGA favorite with a controversial past. In Kansas, Hamilton, a 61-year-old megachurch pastor and former Republican, defeated incumbent GOP Sen. Roger Marshall. In Iowa, Democrat Josh Turek, a state lawmaker and two-time Paralympic gold medalist who describes himself as a "prairie populist," defeated GOP Rep. Ashley Hinson, a former local news anchor. In South Carolina, Andrews, a pediatrician, defeated incumbent Sen. Darline Graham, who was appointed to the seat after the recent death of her brother, longtime Sen. Lindsey Graham. In Ohio, Democrat Sherrod Brown defeated incumbent Republican Sen. Jon Husted to book a return ticket to the U.S. Senate, where he previously served from 2007 to 2025.
Democrat Scott Colom was even leading incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi by a handful of votes.
These are not the types of races Democrats typically win. Trump won Ohio by 11 points in 2024. He won Iowa by 13 points. He won Texas by 14. He won Kansas by 16. He won South Carolina by 18. He won Mississippi by 24. He won North Carolina — where former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper breezed to victory — by 3.
Whether the 2026 results foreshadow some sort of larger rural realignment — or just a temporary rebuke of Trump's current policies — remains to be seen. But either way, Tuesday's blue tsunami swept well into red America.
The Trump effect
Before Election Day, the president urged his supporters to vote like he was on the ballot. Afterward, he wrote on social media, "I wasn't on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!"
But preliminary exit polls suggested that even if Americans couldn't technically cast their votes for — or against — Trump this time around, his performance and policies were very much top of mind.
A full 62% of midterm voters said they disapproved of how Trump is handling his job as president. Just 38% said they approved. No recent president has emerged from a midterm election with an approval rating that low. Nearly 90% of voters said the cost of living was a crucial or major factor in their vote; about the same number said they were concerned about the price of gas and groceries. Nearly two-thirds said that Trump's policies, including tariffs, have made the U.S. economy worse and that going to war with Iran was the wrong decision. More than half said Trump is not a strong leader, does not fight for people like them, does not have the right priorities and does not have the mental capability to serve effectively as president.
Meanwhile, Trump did little to boost Republican chances on Election Day. His endorsements and interventions appeared to backfire in contest after contest. He attracted more attention in the closing days of the campaign for praising certain candidates' anatomy than for promoting his party's agenda. And he spent his final appearance before Nov. 3 talking about his troubled reflecting pool project.
Trump has defied history before. But in the end, 2026 seemed to show that even his powers have their limits. In 2006, President George W. Bush's Republicans lost both the House and the Senate after Americans soured on another Middle Eastern war. Something similar happened again on Tuesday.
Swing voters swung — hard
The big story of the 2024 presidential election was how a rightward shift among previously left-leaning independents and Latinos helped propel Trump back to the presidency.
It appears both groups have shifted back.
According to Equis, a polling firm that focuses on Latino voters, Democrats increased their overall share of the Latino vote by 10 points in 2026 (65%) compared to 2024 (55%). In some states, like Virginia (+19 points) and New Jersey (+23 points), Democratic gains among Latinos were even bigger. In others, like Texas (60%) and Florida (56%), Democrats went from losing the Latino vote last time to winning it. Those gains likely contributed to key House victories in both states and major statewide wins in Texas.
As for self-identified independents, Trump split them about evenly with Democrat Kamala Harris two years ago. This time around, independents appear to have favored Democrats by roughly 17 percentage points.
A new generation of Democrats
For decades, Democrats have lamented their party's gerontocracy, from the Silent Generation stalwarts who long led their congressional caucus to the baby boomer candidates who seem to keep winning their presidential nominations.
But Tuesday's tsunami has provided the party with a whole new batch of "elder Millennial" stars, including Talarico (37), El-Sayed (42), Andrews (45), Turek (47), Iowa Gov.-elect Rob Sand (44) and Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff (39), whose cruise to reelection has inspired buzz about a possible presidential bid (which he has publicly ruled out).
Before Nov. 3, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani were among the most prominent Democrats representing the party's next generation on the national stage. Now they have company.
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