Abdul El-sayed Once Promised A 7-point Victory. Now ‘we’ll See.’

GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan — For months, progressives have seen the Michigan Senate race as the best chance to show that a proudly left-wing candidate could win a tough election.

Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee, predicted he’d win by 7 points and cast himself as a future presidential power broker. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said at a recent fundraiser that an El-Sayed victory would prove “anybody can win anywhere.”

But with less than one week until Election Day, El-Sayed is leaning heavily on more traditional Democrats for support, stumping with former President Barack Obama and embracing help from Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, an avowed moderate.

And does he still think he’ll win by 7 points?

“We’ll see,” El-Sayed hedged, in an interview with POLITICO.

El-Sayed is still running hard on progressive policies. But his more conventional closing tactics may be something of a reality check on the aspirations of the activist left to turn his race into a transformational moment for the Democratic Party.

And they underscore the realities of a stubbornly close race whose result might matter as much for progressives’ 2028 hopes as for Democrats’ dreams of Senate control.

El-Sayed has a slight lead over Rogers in most public polls, but he is running behind the top of the Democratic ticket. His supporters warn that skepticism persists among swathes of moderate, Black and Jewish voters who largely broke for his primary rival — and worry it’s being exacerbated by a barrage of Republican attacks on El-Sayed’s religion and ethnicity.

“It's going to be tight for him,” said Lavonia Perryman, a Democratic activist in the state who is supporting El-Sayed. “They're not fools. There are no illusions around any of this. Not at his camp. Not the people in the community who support him.”

Now, as Michigan again becomes the epicenter of the nation’s political power struggle, Democrats aren’t leaving it to chance. Senate Democrats’ top campaign groups have pumped more than $50 million into the state, even as they’ve been able to dial down spending in Georgia and North Carolina, two states President Donald Trump won by wider margins in 2024, because they’ve all but sewn up wins.

Before his primary, El-Sayed bullishly predicted he would win that race by double digits. He appeared so confident he attended a private pool party with controversial streamer Hasan Piker on election eve. He placed his seven-point general-election bet before polls had even closed in his slugfest against moderate Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.).

He ended up squeaking through the primary by only a percentage point, but remained steadfast in his conviction about November.

Now, he’s treading more cautiously.

“We feel really strong about where we are,” El-Sayed said when asked a second time on the sidelines of his Grand Rapids rally with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) whether he stood by his seven-point call.

And he repeatedly redirected questions about what next Tuesday’s results would mean for the progressive movement, saying he was focused on the task at hand.

“This is about delivering results for the 10 million people in my state. I’m not running to be an avatar for anything,” he said. “Michigan speaks very loudly for a lot of reasons politically, but this isn’t about me.”

Some Democrats think El-Sayed may win in spite of the resistance he’s encountering within some pockets of the party.

“You have to say advantage El-Sayed at this point. Not because of his quality as a candidate — he seems to be running behind the environment,” said Michigan-based Democratic strategist Adrian Hemond. “The environment is poison right now for Republicans.”

Several voters and activists who packed a too-hot high school gymnasium in Detroit on Saturday to see Obama said the former president would be critical to easing concerns among Black voters — including about El-Sayed’s past critiques of his time in office.

“We are not going to agree on every detail of every issue,” Obama said on stage. “Disagreeing on means is different from disagreeing on ends — on our goals.”

And El-Sayed is trying to cut into Trump’s coalition with a recent ad targeting Newsmax and Fox News viewers calling Washington a “corrupt swamp” and touting his overlap on some issues with MAGA voters.

Still, El-Sayed is clear-eyed that he’s not going to win over everyone — and emphatic that he’s not going to “pander” to do it.

“You’re never going to win all the votes. My goal is to win as many votes as possible,” he said. “I think the reason we're succeeding is because at least I'm telling you what I think.”

Adam Wren contributed to this article.