Abdul El-Sayed’s win over Rep. Haley Stevens in Michigan’s Senate primary Tuesday night was not supposed to be this close. It was not supposed to happen at all. And that is exactly why conservatives in Wisconsin should pay attention to our neighbors ahead of next week’s primary in our own state. While the match up with Michigan was different than the primary playing out in Wisconsin, there is still much to be learned from watching the closer-than-expected victory for the progressives overnight.
El-Sayed, backed by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, ran against Chuck Schumer’s handpicked, establishment-blessed candidate and beat her anyway, even after a late surge for Stevens out of Wayne County and Detroit closed much of the gap. This was the sharpest test yet of whether the socialist left, riding a wave of DSA-aligned wins in New York, Pennsylvania, and Colorado, can now win in a purple Midwest battleground primary rather than a safe blue district. It can.
Here is the first takeaway for conservatives: the fight in the Democratic Party is not cosmetic, it is existential. El-Sayed ran on Medicare for All and open contempt for “the donor class.” Stevens ran a traditional blue-collar campaign and lost anyway. When the establishment’s chosen candidate cannot beat a democratic socialist, the moderate wing of the party has a real problem, not a messaging problem.
Second takeaway: the general election just became a test of DSA policies in a key swing state. El-Sayed will face former Congressman Mike Rogers in what both parties already call one of the most competitive Senate races in the country, one that could decide who controls the chamber. No one will need to invent a caricature of a far-left opponent. El-Sayed’s own record, on socialized medicine and defunding police departments during his time in Michigan politics, speaks for itself. Will purple-state general election voters reject DSA-style politics again?
Third takeaway: polling a primary continues to be difficult. The public polling across the Michigan Senate primary showed mostly double digit leads for El-Sayed. Final results overnight showed a much tighter race between him and Stevens. In Wisconsin, polling shows similar large leads for Francesca Hong, time will tell if the polling here is more accurate than Michigan.
And Michigan is not the last word on this. Next week, Wisconsin holds its own primary, and the establishment’s panic there is even more pronounced. Democratic socialist Francesca Hong, a DSA member running for governor, has held a comfortable double-digit lead for weeks in the polls while Democrat leaders scrambled from one alternative candidate to the next trying to stop her. Hong has created the lead without a lot of the support that El-Sayed benefitted from in his primary from national politicians, think Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Will she be able to runaway with a victory due to the more chaotic Wisconsin primary and lack of time on the side of the establishment wing to make a meaningful impact?
That gap between “wins the primary” and “wins Wisconsin” is the whole story in one sentence.
Put Michigan and Wisconsin side by side and the pattern conservatives have been pointing to for two years snaps into focus. This is not one rogue candidate in one unusual district. It is a coordinated leftward lurch happening simultaneously across the Midwest, in exactly the states Democrats need to hold to have any shot at governing power, and the party’s own leadership cannot stop it even when it tries.
Most importantly, watch what national Democrats do next. That will be the most telling. Do they rally behind El-Sayed and Hong to avoid a messy split heading into November, swallowing the socialism they spent months fighting? Or do they quietly distance themselves, protecting the brand in swing districts instead? Either answer confirms what conservatives have argued all along. The Democratic Party is not managing a disagreement between the moderate and socialist wings. It is losing an internal civil war, and the Midwest just became its front line, with Wisconsin next up to prove it.
