Democrat Abdul El-Sayed has won Michigan’s Senate race, defeating Republican Mike Rogers and becoming the first Muslim elected to the United States Senate, according to projections from Decision Desk HQ and Fox News and a race call from the Associated Press.
El-Sayed, a 42-year-old physician and former Wayne County health director, took around 51 to 52 percent of the vote to Rogers’ 46 to 47 percent in early counts, with most ballots counted, and with about 85 percent of precincts reporting in AP figures, El-Sayed led Rogers by more than 286,000 votes.
He will succeed retiring Democratic Senator Gary Peters, keeping the seat in Democratic hands in one of the most closely watched races of the 2026 midterms, and he will take his seat in January as the first Muslim member in the chamber’s history.
El-Sayed was born in Michigan to Egyptian immigrant parents, and his background as a doctor and public health official shaped his campaign, which focused on health care, affordability and working families.
The race was one of the most expensive and divisive contests of the cycle, with more than 385 million dollars spent on advertising by both parties, according to AdImpact figures cited in live reporting, and with both campaigns and outside groups spending heavily in the final weeks.
El-Sayed and Rogers, a former seven-term Republican congressman, ran a hard-fought campaign in which both sides levelled personal attacks, and Rogers had lost his first Senate bid in 2024, making this his second attempt at the seat.
El-Sayed’s path to the nomination was itself contested. In the Democratic primary, he narrowly defeated Representative Haley Stevens by about one percentage point, despite Michigan figures including Governor Gretchen Whitmer and retiring Senator Gary Peters backing his opponent.
Stevens later endorsed Rogers two days before the general election, a defection that became a late talking point in the race, and that El-Sayed’s campaign had to address in the final days.
Rogers, for his part, campaigned as an experienced former congressman and a steady Republican voice, and he had the backing of many national Republican figures, but he could not overcome the Democratic turnout and the national mood against the party in power.
The Michigan result was called at around 2 a.m. Eastern Time, after Democrats had already won both the House and the Senate in other projections, and it confirmed that Michigan would remain a Democratic Senate seat for the next six years.
For Democrats, Michigan was a seat they could not afford to lose in their bid to retake the Senate majority. El-Sayed’s win, alongside flips in Ohio, South Carolina, Iowa and Texas and holds in Georgia, Colorado and New Hampshire, helped build the party’s Senate majority on election night.
Entering the night, Republicans held a 53-47 Senate majority, and Democrats needed a net gain of four seats to take control. Michigan was counted as a hold, not a flip, but a loss there would have ended the Democratic path to a majority before the flips elsewhere could matter.
El-Sayed will take his seat as one of the most progressive members of the Senate, according to live reporting, and his win expands the power of the party’s progressive wing, which had backed him in the primary against the party establishment’s preferred candidate.
He has said he wants to change Senate rules and health care policy, and his victory will be watched closely by both parties as a test of whether a progressive candidate can win a purple battleground state in a general election.
El-Sayed’s win also matters for Michigan politics. The state has been a battleground in every recent presidential election, and a Democratic Senate win there, combined with Democratic wins elsewhere on the night, suggests that the party’s coalition in the state held together despite a difficult national environment for incumbents.