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Abdul El-Sayed has officially won Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, but by nothing like the margin the polls suggested.
El-Sayed led Haley Stevens by about 13 points in the polling averages. Instead, he won by about one percentage point after Stevens outperformed expectations, particularly in rural Michigan.
That’s partly a reminder that primaries are uncertain and open primaries are especially difficult to poll, but it also highlights a tension within the Democratic Party: El-Sayed campaigned as a champion of working people while finding his greatest strength among younger, college-educated progressives. Stevens performed better with many of the rural and working-class voters Democrats say they need to win back.
On today’s episode, Mary Radcliffe and Nathaniel Rakich joined me to sort through the results in Michigan and debate what they mean for the general election. We also assessed results across the country.
Voters in Missouri overwhelmingly rejected a Republican-backed amendment that would have made citizen-led constitutional amendments nearly impossible to pass. Missouri Rep. Wesley Bell also easily defeated former Rep. Cori Bush’s comeback bid, giving the Democratic establishment a clear win.
In Washington, moderate Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez advanced from the top-two primary in a Trump-won district that has recently moved left. And in Kansas, voters rejected a Republican-backed effort to require state Supreme Court justices to be chosen by popular vote. The state’s primaries also put data centers and the growing backlash to their effects on local communities in the spotlight.
