Abdul El-Sayed wins Michigan Senate race to become first Muslim elected to the US Senate
Democrat Abdul El-Sayed has defeated Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan, winning the open Senate seat and becoming the first Muslim ever elected to the United States Senate.
Democrat Abdul El-Sayed has won Michigan’s open US Senate seat, according to projections from the Associated Press and other outlets, becoming the first Muslim ever elected to the United States Senate.
El-Sayed, 42, defeated former Republican congressman Mike Rogers in one of the most closely watched and expensive races of the 2026 midterm elections. Projections put El-Sayed ahead by about six points, with roughly 52 per cent of the vote to Rogers’ 46 per cent when the race was called in the early hours of Wednesday, although exact shares varied slightly between outlets as counting continued.
The seat was vacated by retiring Democratic Senator Gary Peters, and it had been widely seen as essential to Democratic hopes of retaking the Senate. Michigan has not elected a Republican to the Senate since 1994, but Republicans had targeted the open seat as a genuine chance to flip it, and the contest drew heavy national spending and attention.
El-Sayed is a physician and former public health official who led the health department in Wayne County, which includes Detroit. He campaigned on lowering costs for working families, expanding access to health care, including universal health care, and reducing corporate influence in politics, a platform that put him on the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
His victory was a breakthrough for that wing. El-Sayed first had to win a divisive Democratic primary in August, narrowly defeating establishment-backed Congresswoman Haley Stevens. In a late twist, Stevens then endorsed Rogers in the closing days of the general-election campaign, a move El-Sayed overcame on election night.
Rogers, 63, a former seven-term congressman and FBI agent, entered the race with strong backing from President Donald Trump and national Republicans. His campaign sought to portray El-Sayed as a radical candidate, including through claims linking him to Islamic extremism and the Muslim Brotherhood, claims El-Sayed denies and which reporting noted remain unsupported by evidence.
In his victory speech in the early hours of Wednesday, El-Sayed declared victory to supporters and took aim at both Rogers and Trump, according to live coverage. His win adds to a sweeping Democratic night nationally, in which the party took control of both chambers of Congress, flipping Senate seats in states including Texas, Iowa, South Carolina and Kansas alongside Michigan.
The historic significance of the result extends beyond party politics. Muslim Americans have previously served in the House of Representatives — Keith Ellison became the first Muslim elected to Congress in 2006, and Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar followed in 2018 as the first Muslim women in the House — but none had ever been elected to the Senate before El-Sayed.
El-Sayed, who is of Egyptian descent, studied medicine at the University of Michigan and Columbia University and earned a doctorate at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He will take his seat when the new Congress is sworn in on 3 January 2027, alongside the other winners of Tuesday’s elections.
What comes next is the formal certification of the Michigan result, followed by committee assignments and the shaping of El-Sayed’s legislative agenda in a Senate his party has just retaken. How far a progressive senator from a battleground state can push health-care and cost-of-living measures in a divided Washington will be one of the early tests of the new Congress.
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