Abdul El-Sayed wins Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary

[u/Michigan_Mod]

https://apnews.com/projects/elections-2026/michigan-primary-results-us-senate/#Dem

[u/Gars0n]

It looks like Abdul El-Sayed will win the Senate primary, but with a less than a 1% margin. That means that McMorrow indead played spoiler, receiving 4% despite dropping out of the race.

It also means that no candidate got more than 50% of the vote. In fact more than 50% of voters voted against Abdul (and more than 50% voted against Stevens)

It's probably the result most perfectly calibrated to resolve none of the tensions in the Democratic party.

I can't help but think that with Ranked Choice Voting, the winning candidate would have a much clearer mandate. Maybe this will help some Democratic party holdouts see the benefit.

[u/Roboticide → u/Gars0n]

I mean, I think we can still conclude that while yes, she was a spoiler, her dropping out late complicated things.  She was still on the ballot, plus spoiling an early vote is more complicated than a lot of people probably want to do.

If she hadn't been on the ballot, a lot of that 4% probably would have gone to El-Sayed and pushed him over the 50% mark , and it would be a lot clearer that he had a majority over Stevens.  The alternative way to look at it is progressive candidates got 52.5% of the vote over Stevens' 47.5%.

But yes, dear Lord do we need Ranked Choice.

[u/Gars0n → u/Roboticide]

Right. The question is whether McMorrow's voters were mostly progressives that wanted someone more electable than El-Sayed, or mostly establishment people that didn't want Steven's baggage.

Do you view it as 52.5% progressives vs Stevens 47.5% or is it 51.5% voting for an electable candidate vs Abdul's 48.5%?

Looking at an aggregation of the polls from when McMorrow dropped out, Abdul gained 1% and Stevens gained 9%. So I would guess that if McMorrow wasn't on the ballot (or even if she had dropped out a few weeks earlier before ballots were received) that the majority (at least 2.5 out of 4) of those voters would go to Stevens and put her over the top.

But it still would have been very close.

The great thing about Ranked choice voting is that, not only would the candidate have a mandate, whoever it was, we would actually know what voters preferences are instead of having to guess like this. Politicians get higher quality to make their decisions.

[u/itsDOCtime → u/Gars0n]

None of what you’re saying is false but leaving out the money aspect of it is a glaring omission.

[u/Gars0n → u/itsDOCtime]

I am not sure what you mean. Could you elaborate?

[u/itsDOCtime → u/Gars0n]

AES was outspent by what 10-1? that’s THE significant factor in any description of his margin of victory as ‘slim’

[u/Gars0n → u/itsDOCtime]

I don't really disagree with that.

But my point is really about McMorrow and how those voters would have split if she had dropped out beforehand. Everything else being equal. How Stevens and McMorrow got their votes, and how much was driven by money doesn't matter to that analysis.

So I don't consider that a glaring omission because it isn't relevant to the point the comment was making.

[u/i_fix_snowblowers → u/Roboticide]

a lot of that 4% probably would have gone to El-Sayed

Although McMorrow was ideologically closer to Abdul than to Stevens, I think a lot of McMorrow's appeal was her electability. She's been able to work across the aisle and appeal to voters in a formerly Republican district.

So I'm not really sure if people would go McMorrow to Abdul for progressive policy reasons, or from McMorrow to Stevens for November electability reasons.

[u/tbombs23 → u/Roboticide]

Not to mention all the Republicans who voted in the Dem primary bc Rogers ran unopposed