Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic primary for the party’s Senate nomination in the state of Michigan on Tuesday, 4 August. He defeated his challenger, Congresswoman Haley Stevens, by a single percentage point. This primary provides multiple interesting lessons to political observers.
One, it was a lot closer than originally anticipated.
According to polling coming into the race, El-Sayed was comfortably up by double digits. He led the RealClearPolitics polling aggregate for the primary by 10.2 points, to be exact. However, the single poll that put him even within single digits of Stevens was the earliest still in the aggregate from mid-July. All polls published after gave him at least a 10-point lead.
This could be a lesson for pollsters: the high level of online enthusiasm for the new-wave, progressive, socialist Democratic candidates may not translate to actual votes. There have been instances of internet activists proactively seeking out online panels run by pollsters to give their preferred candidate a lead in the survey. Furthermore, an online activist base is not limited to eligible US voters.
Two, this primary was a victory for the new socialist wing of the Democratic Party—although in El-Sayed’s case, it is a bit of a misnomer.
He has stated in the past that he does not identify as a socialist; rather, as a capitalist. However, he shares a lot of his platform with the Democratic socialists, such as Medicare for all, abolishing the immigration enforcement agency ICE, and fervent opposition to the current Israeli government. Additionally, days before the primary, he appeared on a livestream from a pool party with political streamer Hasan Piker.
Piker is a far-left extremist who not only identifies as a socialist, but has claimed multiple times that he is not objecting to the label ‘communist’ either.
El-Sayed is currently trailing his Republican opposition, Mike Rogers, in polling for the general election. Rogers is up 0.3 points in the RCP aggregate. While that is a very narrow lead, given how much El-Sayed was overpolled in the primary, it could be trouble for him. Stevens, on the other hand, was ahead of Rogers by 1.7 points.
That was part of the reason why many establishment Democrats in Michigan—such as Governor Gretchen Whitmer or outgoing Senator Gary Peters—had endorsed Stevens over El-Sayed in their party’s primary contest.
After Michigan, Wisconsin Is the Next Battleground for Socialists vs Democratic Establishment
Wisconsin is holding its primary elections on 11 August.
Based on polling and betting odds, Francesca Hong seems to be a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination at this point. Unlike El-Sayed in Michigan, she is a self-described socialist. She has also raised a lot of eyebrows even among Democratic voters with some of the strange positions she has taken.
In 2020, during the George Floyd riots, she called not only for defunding the police, as many Democrats did, but even for abolishing the police. She has since walked back those statements, instead adopting the more nebulous stance: ‘I’m serious about public safety,’ during an appearance on Fox News.
Hong has also criticized the beloved American holiday of Thanksgiving. She has called on people to ‘cancel Thanksgiving’ due to its ‘colonial past’. Unlike her remarks about abolishing the police, she has not disavowed those statements, even when recently confronted about them.
So far, there have only been two polls published for the Wisconsin gubernatorial race. Hong is trailing Republican Tom Tiffany by three points in both. As her chances of securing the Democratic nomination have increased, Republicans’ odds of winning the Wisconsin governorship have also improved in betting markets, with the GOP nominee becoming the clear favourite by now.
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