Abdul El-Sayed Beat Haley Stevens by a Single Point in Michigan After $65 Million Was Spent to Stop Him

Abdul El-Sayed, a 41-year-old physician and former Michigan health official who ran on Medicare for All and an arms embargo on Israel, won the state's Democratic Senate primary Tuesday by roughly one percentage point, beating Rep. Haley Stevens 48.5% to 47.5% with 99% of the vote counted. NBC News, the Associated Press and CNN all called the race early Wednesday.

The margin was narrow, but the money behind it was not. El-Sayed overcame close to $65 million in outside spending in a primary that pro-Israel groups and Democratic establishment donors treated as a firewall. Stevens, 43, a suburban Detroit congresswoman first elected in 2018 and seated in 2019, had the endorsements of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who backed her 11 days before the vote. El-Sayed had Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

State Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who suspended her campaign a month before the primary but remained on the ballot, took about 4% — a bloc larger than the gap between the top two finishers.

Stevens conceded and immediately pivoted to the general election. "Donald Trump and Mike Rogers want us to come out of this primary tired and divided, so their billionaire backers can come in and let multimillionaire Mike Rogers walk away with this Senate seat," she said in her statement congratulating El-Sayed. El-Sayed, for his part, acknowledged the primary had left marks inside his own party, saying there is "a lot of healing to do."

The result is the clearest evidence yet this cycle that the Democratic electorate in a Midwestern battleground is willing to reject the candidate its national leadership picked. El-Sayed ran for governor of Michigan in 2018 and lost the primary to Whitmer by more than 20 points. Eight years later, running further to the left and against a far better-funded opponent, he won.

He now faces former Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican and onetime chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who ran unopposed in his primary. Rogers lost to Sen. Elissa Slotkin in 2024 by roughly 19,000 votes out of more than 5.5 million cast — one of the closest Senate races in the country that year. Republicans have spent the past 18 months arguing that a second Rogers run, in a lower-turnout midterm year and against a nominee they can label a socialist, flips the seat.

Michigan ranks among the most vulnerable seats Democrats are defending in November. The party's internal argument over whether the vulnerability is best answered with a moderate or with someone who can turn out voters who skipped 2024 was, in Michigan, settled by about 10,000 votes.