Democrat El-Sayed Wins Michigan Senate Race

BRIGHTON, Mich.—Progressive Democrat Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan’s Senate election on Nov. 3, defeating former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) in one of the most closely watched races of the 2026 midterms.

El-Sayed’s win keeps retiring Sen. Gary Peters’s (D-Mich.) seat within Democratic control, and pushes the party’s Senate majority to 54 seats. The party earlier in the evening won control of both the Senate and the House.

The race was a major test for the progressive movement. Progressive Democrats have netted a series of wins and upsets throughout blue cities and districts this year but had yet to prove themselves against a Republican in a purple battleground state like Michigan. After Democrat Francesca Hong narrowly lost the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary, attention turned to El-Sayed’s matchup against Rogers.

It’s also a big win for Democrats, who were fighting against Rogers and his Republican allies to keep Peters’s seat blue and flip the Senate from GOP control.

El-Sayed is also the first Muslim in U.S. history to be elected to the Senate. He faced attacks from Rogers and President Donald Trump throughout the race for his past activism and allegations of family associations with groups including the Muslim Brotherhood.

Said Shukri, a Muslim Michigander from the Hartland area, said he believed national media fueled a narrative of “hatred” towards the Muslim community from others in Michigan, and that he doesn’t think it represents the people of the state.

“There’s a lot of that [Muslim] population that also, you know, lives here, resides here, works here, goes to school here, are great members of our community, [and] great members of society,” he told The Epoch Times.

After casting his ballot on Tuesday, Shukri said he thought El-Sayed winning could be a unifying moment for Michigan.

“[El-Sayed] being a doctor, being a Muslim, being an Arab-American, I felt like it actually resonated,” Shukri said. “Besides all the things that he speaks for, I actually see a lot of representation in him and myself, and I think Michigan actually stands for that.”

The opposition to El-Sayed was not enough to flip the Senate seat for Rogers, who ran unsuccessfully against Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) in 2024 when Trump carried the Great Lakes State for the second time since 2016.

Polls showed Rogers and El-Sayed neck and neck until the final week of the race, when new surveys from CNN, CBS, and Glengariff widened the former Wayne County Health director’s lead and gave him a 3.5-percentage-point advantage in RealClearPolitics’ polling average.

El-Sayed ran on a progressive populist platform that he often described as, “Money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for all.” The epidemiologist also called for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement in favor of returning to the Immigration and Naturalization Service for border security, and ending arms sales to Israel.

Rogers touted his experience as an FBI agent and House Intelligence Committee chair, and said on his website he would “stand with President Trump to deliver on the mandate given to him by the American people.” He also ran on bringing manufacturing back to Michigan, lowering prices, and “prioritizing education not indoctrination” for children.

Hartland Republican Glenn Gogoleski said on Tuesday that he cast his ballot for Rogers. When asked why Rogers has struggled with winning over all conservatives across Michigan, Gogoleski said libertarian leaning voters have been reluctant to throw their support behind him.

“They can’t stand him. And there’s a lot of those libertarian-leaning Republicans that are just not voting at all in that race, and which, I think, is foolish. Rogers is definitely a big-state kind of Republican,” Gogoleski told The Epoch Times.

Linda Wildern worked on Rep. John James’s (R-Mich.) first Senate campaign in 2018 and said Rogers “is not a favorite person of mine.”

But she ultimately voted for the former FBI agent and disputed Democrats’ claim that Rogers would just be a “‘yes man’ for Trump.”

Many Michigan voters who spoke with The Epoch Times throughout the race blamed Trump for rising prices, citing the Iran war.

A majority, 66 percent, of likely voters in the CNN/SSRS poll said they disapproved of Trump’s performance, and 64 percent said they believed Rogers would prioritize the interests of Trump and the GOP.

The race also had a last-minute surprise after Stevens’s fiancé Jason Turkish unexpectedly endorsed Rogers and accused El-Sayed of anti-semitism for his criticisms of Israel.

“It kind of hurts, but I think it unified the Democratic Party. I think it showed where a lot of them stand. A lot of them do stand with Abdul,” Cameron Shirley, 23, told The Epoch Times.