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The Right-Wing Attacks on Abdul El-Sayed Keep Faltering

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.

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........

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