Conventional wisdom still says that Democrats are favored to win the midterms this year. But Democrats may have blown up their chances when Abdul El-Sayed won the Michigan Senate primary. There’s a reason why the establishment is quietly panicking about El-Sayed in particular.
Every previous Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) candidate who won his or her election did it on deep-blue turf. Blue districts in blue states so safely Democrat that a socialist nominee barely moved the needle nationally. The party establishment could shrug it off as a coastal curiosity, a noisy fringe contained to zip codes Republicans were never going to win anyway.
But El-Sayed just blew that theory apart.
He won a statewide Senate primary in Michigan, a Midwestern battleground that could decide control of the chamber. Democrat insiders reportedly wrote off the race in the wake of El-Sayed’s victory, and it's easy to see why. An antisemitic radical socialist just became the Democrat Party's nominee in one of the most competitive states in the country, and there's no blue-district firewall to hide behind this time.
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The reality is that this changes the stakes for the entire midterm map. A socialist winning a safe district reads more like a local issue. A socialist winning statewide in a state Trump carried is a five-alarm fire, where the threat of socialism is suddenly in your backyard, front yard, and your neighbors’ yards.
On The Five this week, Dana Perino pointed out that El-Sayed's primary win has already given Republican voters a fresh jolt of enthusiasm heading into next year.
“The DSA is hurting the Democrats, there's just no doubt about it,” she said. “If you look at some of these surveys that came out recently about who's the most enthusiastic to vote, Republicans or Democrats? I learned today that if you look at August 5, all of a sudden Republican enthusiasm for voting went up. Guess what happened August 5? Let me take you to the Wayback Machine. El Sayed won the nomination in Michigan. And he wants to be out there, he's going to be out there, he's going to be an issue.”
“The DSA is HURTING the Democrats. There’s just no doubt about it.” @DanaPerino says the socialist surge is boosting Republican enthusiasm ahead of the midterms, but warns President Trump’s presence could energize voters on BOTH sides. pic.twitter.com/DhNzIm00sT
— The Five (@TheFive) September 4, 2026
And we may be seeing that reflected in other polling as well. A new Harvard-Harris poll shows Republicans now leading Democrats on the generic congressional ballot among likely voters, a two-point edge that would have seemed unthinkable a year ago. Among registered voters, Democrats still cling to a two-point lead. But even that number is bad news for them. According to experts, Democrats need a lead of between 3 and 4 points just to retake the House majority.
Harvard-Harris is one of the most credible pollsters in the country. So my question is whether this poll reflects the El-Sayed effect. It could be. Which means this is not just a Michigan problem for Democrats.
A lost Senate seat in a critical battleground state is bad enough on its own. But El-Sayed's nomination is turning into a national talking point that Republicans can run in House and Senate races from Pennsylvania to Arizona, reminding swing voters exactly who sets the agenda in the Democrat Party.
Every ad the GOP cuts featuring El-Sayed writes itself, and Democrat candidates in competitive districts are going to spend the remaining weeks of the midterm election season fielding questions about him, whether they like it or not.
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
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