When Mallory McMorrow suspended her Senate campaign in Michigan earlier this month, Democrats across the ideological spectrum assumed her departure would benefit Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive favorite who appeared closer to her politically.
Less than three weeks before primary day, the first public polling since her exit suggests the opposite may be happening.
Two surveys released over the past week have put Rep. Haley Stevens ahead of El-Sayed in the Democratic primary to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, reversing an earlier trend that had shown El-Sayed, a former Detroit health director, with a narrow advantage. While political analysts caution that one round of polling is far from definitive, the results are scrambling expectations around one of the most consequential Senate races in the country.
McMorrow, a state senator, suspended her campaign on July 5. A Detroit News/WDIV-TV poll conducted July 8 through July 11 found Stevens leading El-Sayed 48% to 41% among likely Democratic primary voters. Another survey by Tavern Research also showed Stevens ahead by one point.
Read More: Democratic Senate Hopeful Abdul El-Sayed Is Running Against Both Parties
Before El-Sayed entered the race in April 2025, McMorrow was widely viewed as the Democrat best positioned to occupy the party's progressive lane. But El-Sayed—who has been endorsed by the United Auto Workers, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib—quickly established himself as the campaign's leading progressive voice, running on Medicare for All, organized labor, and an overhaul of U.S. policy toward Israel.
That left McMorrow struggling to carve out a distinct political identity between El-Sayed's insurgent campaign and Stevens' establishment-backed bid. "I've always maintained that had Abdul El-Sayed not been in the race, McMorrow would have been the progressive darling," says David Dulio, a political science professor at Oakland University in the Detroit area. "She got outflanked by El-Sayed, and that left her very little room to maneuver."
So far, McMorrow has not endorsed either Stevens or El-Sayed. On Monday, Peters, the retiring incumbent, formally endorsed Stevens.
The primary is drawing an explosion of outside spending, most of it for Stevens. Since early May, outside groups have spent nearly $50 million on television and digital advertising to boost Stevens and attack El-Sayed, including more than $25 million from the super PAC affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Other Democratic groups aligned with the party establishment have also invested heavily on Stevens' behalf.
AIPAC’s involvement has become a lightning rod in the race, in which the two candidates’ differences on U.S. support for Israel has emerged as a dominant issue. Stevens has defended continued U.S. military aid to Israel while calling for a two-state solution, placing herself largely within the Democratic mainstream before the war in Gaza transformed the party's politics. El-Sayed has become one of the country's most outspoken Democratic critics of Israel, accusing it of committing genocide in Gaza and calling for an end to American military assistance. The issue has become central in Michigan, home to the country’s largest Arab American population and the birthplace of the "uncommitted" movement that protested former President Joe Biden’s handling of the war.
Even so, Stevens has tried to focus her campaign more on manufacturing, tariffs, and the economic consequences of President Trump's policies, arguing that those concerns remain voters' top priorities.
El-Sayed, meanwhile, has leaned on an energized national progressive network. His campaign reported raising $4.57 million during the most recent fundraising quarter—more than double what either Stevens or Republican Mike Rogers raised. Stevens raised $2.1 million during the same period, though she reported more cash on hand at the end of June.
Dulio cautioned against reading too much into the initial batch of polls about how McMorrow's supporters are shifting. "We don't know that more of her voters haven't split toward El-Sayed," he says. "I don't think we have enough evidence yet to say that's wrong or right."
A new Data for Progress poll commissioned by American Priorities, a pro-El-Sayed super PAC, shows him ahead by 13 points—though surveys sponsored by groups backing a specific candidate can often be less reliable.
El-Sayed is hoping to be the latest high-profile primary win for progressives, who have recently prevailed in races in several deep-blue cities and states. Yet Michigan remains one of the nation's most evenly divided political battlegrounds, drawing concerns among many in the party about whether El-Sayed can beat Rogers in November. Democrats won the state's other Senate seat by fewer than 20,000 votes in 2024, and Republicans view Peters' retirement as one of their best pickup opportunities this cycle.
El-Sayed has argued that Democrats should focus less on nominating the candidate perceived as safest for November and more on offering voters a bold economic agenda centered on expanding health care, strengthening labor unions, and confronting corporate influence. His campaign has cast the race as an opportunity for Democrats to embrace a more ambitious vision that would be better positioned to energize voters to turnout in November.
“I think this election could be a real change election,” says former Michigan Rep. Andy Levin, a progressive backing El-Sayed. “There's going to be several people around the country who show that the way to win purple districts isn't necessarily to run to the middle. It's to just be really honest and straightforward and make working-class people believe you will actually fight for them, and you won't be bought, and you won't be led astray by all of the fancy Washington interests.”
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