By The American Tribune | Created at 2026-08-08 10:16:51 | Updated at 2026-08-08 11:05:36
50 minutes ago
Abdul El-Sayed might have survived Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, but a brutal breakdown of the vote showed just how narrow the coalition carrying the far-left candidate actually was. Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer walked through the numbers after El-Sayed narrowly defeated Rep. Haley Stevens, revealing enormous margins for El-Sayed in Michigan’s college towns while Stevens dominated heavily black communities. The contrast immediately raised questions about whether El-Sayed can put the Democratic coalition back together before November. Former Clinton pollster Mark Penn then explained where he believes the real danger lies.
The segment aired during Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom,” where Hemmer used the network’s election board to conduct what he called an “autopsy” of the Michigan Democratic primary. El-Sayed, a progressive former Detroit health official, had barely escaped the primary against Stevens and will now face Republican Mike Rogers for the open Senate seat. Michigan remains one of the most important Senate battlegrounds in the country, making any cracks inside the Democratic voting coalition particularly important heading into the general election.
“One more time here, and I’ll show you what the autopsy is telling us in Michigan,” Hemmer began before displaying the results from college towns. “How the major college towns in that state voted. You ready? Here it is now. He won by 53 in Ypsilanti, 36 in East Lansing, 36, 31, 30, 28. That’s a clean sweep.” The board showed El-Sayed piling up enormous margins in communities surrounding some of Michigan’s largest universities.
El-Sayed’s primary victory was extremely close despite the massive margins in those progressive strongholds. As Mediaite reported, El-Sayed pulled out a razor-thin victory over Stevens, setting off immediate questions about his general-election strength against Rogers. The concern became clearer when Hemmer moved away from the college towns and displayed what happened in communities where black voters make up a major part of the Democratic electorate.
“What did she do with major black towns across the state?” Hemmer asked. “She won by 53 points, 49 points, 40 points, 37, 35, 31.” Instead of anything resembling the margins El-Sayed had run up around universities, majority black communities broke dramatically toward Stevens. “There is a clear distinction here, gentlemen, between these two voting groups, at least this past week in Michigan,” Hemmer said before turning to Penn.
“Mark Penn, how do you dissect these numbers right now?” Hemmer asked. Penn cautioned that the primary results did not necessarily mean Black Democrats would abandon their party’s nominee in November. “Well, I would not confuse how the Black community voted in a primary versus how they’ll vote in a general election,” he responded. “I think you will find that the Black vote will, by and large, consolidate behind the Democrats in the general election, and those students — they are gonna stick with their choice.”
Watch the Michigan vote breakdown and discussion here:
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Penn instead pointed to another group of voters who could create a much larger problem for El-Sayed: the Democrats who chose Stevens because they preferred a more moderate candidate. El-Sayed does not need huge numbers of those voters to cross over to Rogers for the race to change dramatically. In a state routinely decided by tight margins, Penn argued that even a relatively small group of defectors could be enough.
“The question is whether or not a lot of the moderate Democrats who were for Stevens will say, ‘I just won’t go there, I will defect from my party,’” Penn said. He then put a number on the danger facing El-Sayed. “Is it possible to find 5% that will do that? It is highly likely that you’re gonna find 5% of those Stevens voters who are going to switch to the other side.”
That leaves El-Sayed heading into the general election with a shaky coalition: massive support around Michigan’s universities, considerably weaker support in several communities Democrats heavily rely on, and a lingering question around voters who backed Stevens. As Penn put it, if Rogers can peel away just that small slice of Stevens supporters, “that alone would give a margin of victory to Rogers.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video.
