Former Clinton Pollster Had Some Bad News for Abdul El-Sayed
This story raises questions about governance, accountability, and American values.
Abdul El-Sayed just won the kind of primary that should scare his own party more than it scares us. He beat Haley Stevens, sure, but by a margin nobody predicted a few months ago, and the internals are the story here, not the topline. When a former Clinton pollster is the one pumping the brakes on your Senate campaign, that's not spin from Fox News.
New Republican Times Editorial Board
It’s not over, but you can already see where Abdul El-Sayed will need to put in serious effort to improve his chances of winning that Michigan Senate seat. AES narrowly defeated Rep. Haley Stevens in a tense primary that was expected to be a landslide for him.
Yes, it’s the furthest he has ever advanced in his quest for elected office. It also highlights the strong opposition he faces, as he struggled significantly with black and Jewish voters, the two largest minority groups in the state.
He’s also unpopular among rural voters. The elite class supports him. El-Sayed won none of the counties where college degrees are the lowest share of the electorate. Might as well stamp ‘elitist’ on his forehead.
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New Republican Times Editorial Board
Abdul El-Sayed just won the kind of primary that should scare his own party more than it scares us. He beat Haley Stevens, sure, but by a margin nobody predicted a few months ago, and the internals are the story here, not the topline. When a former Clinton pollster is the one pumping the brakes on your Senate campaign, that's not spin from Fox News. That's someone inside the Democratic machine looking at the same numbers we are and getting nervous.
The coalition math is brutal. He struggled with black voters and Jewish voters in a state where those two groups aren't a rounding error, they're the ballgame. He couldn't win a single county where college degrees are scarce. Put that together and you get a candidate who does great in Ann Arbor coffee shops and terribly in the places where Michigan actually makes things and elects senators. That's not an accident of geography. That's what happens when a campaign is built for people who already agree with you.
Democrats have been telling themselves for a decade that the path back to working-class voters runs through more credentialed, more progressive messengers. Michigan just handed them evidence to the contrary, and it came from their own polling shop, not ours. El-Sayed can still win in November. But the counties he lost and the voters he couldn't reach are exactly the ones that decide Michigan statewide races, and no amount of enthusiasm from the base fixes that math by itself.
Commentary written with AI assistance by the New Republican Times Editorial Board.