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Abdul El-Sayed, a public health official, narrowly defeated four-term Rep. Haley Stevens in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary. The vote proved too close to call on Tuesday evening, but by Wednesday morning, El-Sayed had claimed the win, and Stevens had phoned him to concede. The race was called by about 10 a.m.

It’s a watershed moment in Democratic politics. No other recent instance of a left-wing insurgent defeating the Democratic establishment candidate in a swing-state Senate primary comes to mind. Stevens and her camp threw everything they had into the race. She enjoyed the support of both the Washington and Michigan Democratic establishments. Super PACs spent tens of millions of dollars, dwarfing the money spent on El-Sayed’s behalf, attempting to get Stevens across the finish line. But El-Sayed ably weaponized these resources against Stevens, making her financial superiority the core of his argument against her.

And yet the victory comes with more of a whimper, given expectations heading into the night. Despite public and private polling showing double-digit leads for El-Sayed heading into the night, he defeated Stevens by just 1 percentage point. Stevens put up strong numbers in rural parts of the state to supplement her leads in metro Detroit, though that wasn’t quite enough to offset the margins El-Sayed posted in Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor. The closeness of the race only underscores one of El-Sayed’s challenges going ahead: reuniting a fractured party after a bitter primary campaign. This was not a resounding verdict.

The most watched Senate primary in the country now........

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