El-Sayed wins Michigan Senate race, set to become first Muslim U.S. senator

Abdul El-Sayed, a Democrat and former public health official, defeated Republican Mike Rogers in the Michigan Senate race in the midterm vote held on Tuesday, 3 November. The result was confirmed early on Wednesday, 4 November. El-Sayed, a 42-year-old physician, is set to become the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate.

A campaign shaped by attacks

During the campaign, President Donald Trump called El-Sayed a jihadist who was on the side of the terrorists, and dozens of Republicans in Congress formed a Sharia-Free America Caucus that depicts Islam's religious code as a threat to the U.S. Constitution. Rogers pressed him on ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, which El-Sayed has denied. Il Giornale reports that in 2012 he signed an open letter to then Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, a Brotherhood figure, backing Morsi's decisions against officials linked to the regime of Hosni Mubarak. In January 2026, Washington added the Egyptian, Jordanian and Lebanese branches of the Brotherhood to its counterterrorism lists, according to the same report.

Speaking to the Associated Press on Wednesday, El-Sayed said his opponents had tried to demonize Muslims over how they pray, and that Michigan had pushed back against it.

“They tried to demonize people because of how they pray.”

He added that people are tired of that kind of attack.

Muslim voters and Dearborn

AP describes a widespread sense among Muslim Americans that the result points to a broader victory. Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the outcome was a turning point for American Muslim political engagement and a defeat for the politics of hate. He accused anti-Muslim extremists, Israel lobby groups and the U.S. president of using every smear in the book against El-Sayed.

“Anti-Muslim hate was on the ballot, and it failed.”

In Dearborn, a majority-Arab American city near Detroit, Mayor Abdullah Hammoud said residents turned out at the ballot box in huge numbers and that El-Sayed had won the support of most Michiganders who voted. Axios reports that El-Sayed took 82% of Dearborn's vote on Tuesday, compared with 36% for Kamala Harris two years earlier.

“What a beautifully American story.”

Kamala Harris, 202436%

Abdul El-Sayed, 202682%

Kamala Harris, 2024

36 %

Abdul El-Sayed, 2026

82 %

Data from the article text

Gains beyond Democratic strongholds

Axios reports that El-Sayed won a larger share of the vote in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties than both Harris and Sen. Elissa Slotkin did in 2024. He took 56% in Oakland County, and Rogers still won Macomb County, a Republican stronghold, by less than 2 percentage points, down from nearly 10 in 2024. Rogers opened a campaign office in Detroit to court Black voters, yet took only 5.4% of the city's vote, down from 7.4% in 2024. Axios says El-Sayed also made gains in more competitive territory, not only in Democratic strongholds.

20247.4%

20265.4%

2024

7.4 %

2026

5.4 %

Data from the article text

Money in politics and the Senate agenda

In an interview with The Washington Post, El-Sayed said his first mission in Congress will be eradicating the influence of money in politics, which he described as unspooling everything else. He linked guaranteed health care, unions, and the spending of money on wars and foreign governments to money in politics. He is expected to join a small but growing group pushing to ban corporate political giving, a caucus strengthened by wins over opponents backed by large corporate donors. Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) said on Wednesday, 4 November, that there is an urgency to end the era of big money and dark money in politics. El-Sayed has said he prefers Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) over Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York) as the new Senate majority leader.

In Colorado, Melat Kiros, 29, born in Ethiopia and raised in Denver, became the first Gen Z woman elected to Congress. She won the 1st district after defeating a 15-term incumbent in the Democratic primary.