Brianna Lyman of the Federalist highlights a lesson from this week’s US Senate election in Michigan.
Socialist Abdul El-Sayed narrowly defeated Rep. Haley Stevens by roughly a point with nearly all votes counted in Michigan’s Democrat primary for U.S. Senate.
El-Sayed campaigned on things like Medicare for All, investing in “affordable” housing, and abolishing ICE. He previously called for defunding the police. His campaign website says he believes “in an economy built by and for working people.”
But the coalition that helped El-Sayed cinch the Democrat nomination is not the constituency his rhetoric implies he cares about. His victory was not the result of support from the low-income or rural voters or groups traditionally thought to constitute working-class communities (which his policies claim to focus on). Instead, younger, wealthier, and “educated” voters in college towns spurred his campaign to victory.
The New York Times’ Reid J. Epstein wrote Wednesday that El-Sayed “was strongest in communities with young voters, college students and educated and wealthy white voters. That coalition carried him through the primary.”
USA Today wrote that El-Sayed won “the most liberal voters and White voters with college degrees” and “swamped Stevens among younger voters and in college towns like Ann Arbor and East Lansing” while also leading in Arab neighborhoods.
In contrast Stevens “showed strength among Black voters in Detroit and Flint and carried most of the state’s interior rural counties, aside from a few with college towns and resort communities,” according to Epstein, while USA Today wrote Stevens’ support came “from Black voters in Detroit and from seniors. She did well in working-class communities in the suburbs, and she carried many of the more conservative and predominantly White rural counties.”
In other words, El Sayed won over voters who are more insulated from the consequences of his socialist policies. And none of this is unique to El-Sayed’s win.
