Abdul El-Sayed may just prove a progressive can win a purple state

Survey Says is a weekly series rounding up the most important polling trends or data points you need to know about, plus a vibe check on a trend that’s driving politics or culture.

In this year’s midterm elections, the hardest Senate seat for Democrats to defend probably isn’t what they expected a few months ago. Polls show Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff handily leading Republican challenger Mike Collins, noted friend to white supremacists.

Rather, the seat most at risk sits in Michigan, and this Tuesday’s Senate primary will see Democrats making a familiar, if especially high-stakes, choice: centrist or progressive? 

As is the case with Wisconsin’s gubernatorial contest, polls suggest the left-most candidate will prevail in the Democratic primary. But unlike in the Badger State, early polling in Michigan hints that the most progressive may also be the best positioned to win in November.

Abdul El-Sayed, a former public health official, leads centrist Rep. Haley Stevens by an average of 11 percentage points in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, according to nine public polls conducted since July 5, when moderate state Sen. Mallory McMorrow dropped out of the race. (Polls were collected as of Friday at 5 PM ET.)

Initially, Stevens seemed to benefit from McMorrow’s exit. The first two post-McMorrow polls showed Stevens ahead of El-Sayed, throwing cold water on the 8-point average lead he held across polls conducted in June, while McMorrow was still in the race.

But the next seven polls in a row have shown El-Sayed with a double-digit lead. Whatever benefit Stevens may have gotten at first by being the sole moderate in the race has seemingly evaporated, another sign of El-Sayed’s overall momentum this summer.

Progressives have rallied around the metro Detroit native. A strong advocate of Medicare for All, El-Sayed has racked up endorsements from superstars like New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. He’s also managed to win support from a broader coalition that includes a major nurses union, the president of the state board of education, and United Auto Workers, a labor union with deep roots in Michigan and around 127,000 local members as of 2023.

Meanwhile, Stevens has the support of The Detroit News as well as various Democratic establishment figures, like Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Sen. Gary Peters, whose retirement kicked off this primary.

As is common with centrists, Stevens’ candidacy rests on an argument of her electability. As she regularly brings up during media hits, she flipped the state’s 11th Congressional District in 2018 and held on to it in 2020. That record is likely why some moderate Democrats looked past her anti-telegenic presence and backed her over McMorrow, who is a talented public speaker but has never won a federal race, much less four of them, as Stevens has.

The catch is, while Stevens’ wins look impressive at first blush, they get more underwhelming the deeper you look. She may have flipped her district in 2018, but she was running for an open seat, unlike many of the more impressive Democratic wins that year. Her opponent, Lena Epstein, was also surrounded with controversy and had worked on President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, tying her closely to an unpopular president in an election where Democrats went on to flip 40 House seats on net. A rising blue tide lifts all blue boats, so to speak.

After Stevens won reelection in 2020, her district was heavily redrawn, and she hasn’t faced a competitive race since.

Data from Split Ticket, an election analysis outfit, also finds that Stevens hasn’t performed much better than a generic candidate would have. After controlling for race fundamentals like incumbency and finances, their data shows she performed the worst out of the six Michigan Democrats who won their 2024 House races, a finding first pointed out by journalist Matt Yglesias, a regular supporter of centrist Democrats.

Across all four of her House races, the quality of Stevens as a candidate has been worth about 1 extra percentage point on average. That pales in comparison to many other centrist Democrats, and yet it may prove useful in a state as purple as Michigan. Its 2024 Senate race saw moderate Democrat Elissa Slotkin eke out a victory by just 19,006 votes, or 0.3 percentage points. The Senate race before that, in 2020, was decided by 1.7 points.

This year’s election may not be as narrow, though. The 2020 and 2024 Senate elections aligned with years when Trump ran for president, while this year’s race is a midterm with him in the White House. This fall’s election could end up looking more like the one in 2018, during Trump’s first term, when Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow won reelection by over 6 points.

And while El-Sayed has never won a statewide election, he seems aware of Michigan’s broader political leanings.

During last Monday’s Democratic Senate debate, he clearly stated, “I’m not a socialist. I’m just a capitalist who understands how capitalism works. The biggest threat to capitalism was never the idea of government regulation. It was always monopoly.”

That’s smart politics when nearly half of Americans (45%), including 2 in 5 independents, say they wouldn’t vote for a candidate who identifies as a democratic socialist, per a YouGov/Economist poll from late June. 

And it seems to be paying off for him, including with a general electorate.

Since the start of June, seven polls have been conducted of a potential general-election matchup against Republican front-runner Mike Rogers, a Trump-endorsed election denier who lost to Slotkin in 2024. On average, the polls show El-Sayed and Stevens performing basically the same, with both in statistical ties against Rogers. El-Sayed has led in five polls, while Stevens has led in four. (This excludes polls that did not provide results for both El-Sayed and Stevens, like one from Tulchin Research.) 

The fact that El-Sayed and Stevens are running about the same in the context of a general election suggests he is not currently paying a penalty for running to Stevens’ left. And his lead in primary polling suggests Michigan Democrats have broad enthusiasm for his run, in contrast with the vibes coming off the Stevens campaign. That may mean he has more upside as a general-election candidate.

But there is one important caveat to this average of general-election polls. It downplays a particularly troubling survey from Glengariff Group, Inc., which shows Rogers leading El-Sayed by 10 points in a hypothetical general election but trailing Stevens by about 1 point. 

That poll is currently an outlier. Removing it from the aggregate increases El-Sayed’s lead over Rogers to 2 points on average. (Stevens’ numbers, which show her tied with Rogers, are about the same either way.)

In general, averages are more reliable than any one poll, but the Glengariff survey shouldn’t be ignored altogether. The pollster has a good track record, according to data from elections analyst Nate Silver. And there are indeed some worries about El-Sayed’s ability to turn out Black Michiganders, who make up 14% of the state and 75% of the population in Detroit, a Democratic stronghold.

As more general-election polling comes out after the primary, the Glengariff survey could remain an outlier—or it may be a harbinger of other bad polling to come. It’s just not clear at the moment.

Ultimately, whichever Democrat prevails on Tuesday will need the full support of their party—centrists and progressives alike—to beat Rogers in the fall. 

Any updates?

• Lindsey Graham’s death has opened up a primary for his South Carolina Senate seat, but while his sister, Darline Graham, has been appointed to the position, it hasn’t made her the clear favorite in the Aug. 11 special primary election. Neither has Trump’s endorsement. A new poll from Emerson College and Nexstar Media finds Graham in second place, with only 19% of likely Republican primary voters behind her. In first place is Rep. Ralph Norman, with 22%. This makes an expensive runoff election likely. 
• New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani floated the idea of arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visited the city, only to back off when he found he didn’t have the legal authority to do so. Still, he appears to have the popular authority for it: A plurality of Americans (49%) supports the idea of the United States arresting Netanyahu in order to fulfill the warrant issued by the International Criminal Court, per the latest YouGov/Economist poll. Meanwhile, 27% say Netanyahu shouldn’t be arrested by the U.S., and 23% aren’t sure.

Vibe check

On Wednesday, Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, racked up his sixth poll this year that shows him with a lead of at least 20 percentage points over his Republican challenger, state Treasurer Stacy Garrity. 

The new poll, conducted by Bravo Group for PennLive, shows Shapiro up 25 points. And it’s not an outlier.

Across nine polls of the general election, Shapiro leads Garrity by an average of 21 points.

If Shapiro pulls off a win of 20 points or more, it will be only the sixth time since 1860 that has happened in Pennsylvania. And it would come at an optimal time for him, given that he is expected to make a run for the presidency in 2028.

Now, that would be an electability case.