With energetic campaigning and savvy responses to the media’s Hasan Piker obsession, the Michigan Democrat is maintaining solid poll numbers.
Abdul El-Sayed greets a supporter at the end of a news conference at the base of the Spirit of Detroit monument in Detroit, Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2026.
(Paul Sancya / AP)
When a tornado threatened the east side of Detroit last week, Democratic US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed shifted from campaigning to making sure that people were safe. After the tornado hit, El-Sayed was in the streets with local officials such as Detroit City Council member Renata Miller and state Rep. Donavan McKinney (the district’s Democratic congressional nominee and likely next House member) assessing the damage, giving people hugs on their doorsteps, spreading the word about how they could get help, and proposing smart solutions for the future – such as burying power lines so they don’t get knocked out in storms.
This people-focused response is typical of El-Sayed’s approach, which blends the roles of candidate and community organizer with an agility rarely seen in statewide political campaigns. And it appears to be working.
Even as the Republican attack machine and its media echo chamber seeks to undermine and smear the Democrat in a desperate attempt to prop up the campaign of former US Rep Mike Rogers, Donald Trump’s hapless Republican nominee for the seat, El-Sayed projects a level of real-world engagement that makes the GOP attacks ring hollow.
That may explain why El-Sayed has led in six of the eight major polls that have been conducted on the Michigan Senate race since the August 4 primary. The most recent survey, released by CNN on Wednesday, showed the Democrat ahead of Rogers by three points, 47-44. Notably, the CNN survey found that 40 percent of likely voters had a favorable view of El-Sayed, versus just 35 percent for Rogers. And, despite all the recent attacks against El-Sayed, Rogers’s unfavorable ratings were still narrowly higher than those of his Democratic rival.
These leads might not seem like much, but in such a close race, every percentage point matters. And there are other hopeful signs for El-Sayed. The most recent poll from the Michigan State University Institute for Public Policy and Social Research, which was released on September 1, had him moving past the 50 percent mark with likely voters, while Rogers was trailing by five points. Another recent poll from the well-regarded Susquehanna Polling and Research group had the Democrat up by an even bigger margin of seven points.
Make no mistake: the Michigan contest is still going to be a long and very expensive race, where El-Sayed knows he will be dramatically outspent — just as he was in the August 4 primary that secured him the nomination for the open Senate seat. And that spending will focus heavily on attacks, which – at least in the early stages of the contest – have been frequently amplified by major media outlets.
Current Issue
But El-Sayed is offering a master class in how to counter the attacks. Take, for instance, the relentless criticism the Democratic nominee has faced for appearing during the primary campaign with popular streamer Hasan Piker. Republicans and much of the media have been obsessed with Piker, whose past statements about Israel and Palestine and other issues have drawn their share of sharp criticism, but whose appeal among young voters cannot be denied.
Critics keep demanding that El-Sayed condemn Piker — as if every candidate should be held responsible for everything that every person they are interviewed by, or photographed with, has ever said. But El-Sayed, a tenacious campaigner who spends much more time on the ground with actual voters than in punditry echo chambers, dismisses what he portrays as clumsy attempts to distract the electorate. “You would think, if you turned on any media, that this whole campaign is about a streamer in California,” he says. “That’s not what this campaign has ever been about.”
This savvy pushback against the right’s latest line of attack is wisely framed, as is El-Sayed’s argument that his opponent, Rogers, and the GOP keep coming back to Piker because they have “nothing to say about anything.” That resonates with voters, who El-Sayed suggests are capable of making the distinction that he does when he says, “It’s not about distancing from an individual. It’s about saying, ‘here’s the thing I disagree with…’ He doesn’t speak for me. I don’t speak for him. There are a lot of things he says that I deeply agree with: people deserve health care, we shouldn’t be fighting dumb wars, the war in Iran is ridiculous, Donald Trump is a fascist, all true. There are things he said I disagree with. There are things he said he now disagrees with.”
Political insiders and many commentators may refuse to entertain so nuanced a perspective. But that’s on them, not El-Sayed, who explains, “The whole discourse is intended to confuse and distract us from the actual issues.”
El-Sayed is not alone in making this observation.
“It is absolutely ludicrous that so much oxygen from sitting elected officials in the United States Congress is being dedicated to discourse around a Twitch streamer for young people,” Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the progressive Squad,” says US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, who recently told CNN, “I do not think that a Twitch streamer is what the people of Michigan are concerning themselves with. I think that what they want to hear all of us talk about is how we’re going to make their lives more affordable.”
That echoes the message from US Rep. Debbie Dingell, a senior Michigan Democrat who says she disagrees with Piker on particular issues but is exasperated with the obsessive media echoing of GOP talking points. “This election is about what’s going to happen when we elect Abdul to the United States Senate. So don’t any reporter ask me again about Hasan Piker; it’s not what November is about.”
Between the reemergence of right-wing red-baiting and Donald Trump’s use of the chilling National Security Presidential Memorandum–7 to criminalize left political organizing, we’re seeing McCarthyism reborn before our eyes.
This assault on democracy cannot be ignored or wished away. Resisting it requires bravery in the face of threats and repression, a steadfast commitment to the truth, and the unwavering belief that we can—and will—overcome this darkness.
We must have an independent media that sets the record straight, unearths corruption and abuses of power, and advances a politics of justice and dignity for all if we’re to win this fight.
That’s why I’m writing to you today. This September, The Nation needs to add 100 monthly donors to sustain our progressive journalism. Your contribution makes the next investigative report, the next truth-speaking column, and the next pathbreaking essay all possible.
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Onward,
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation
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