Since his Democratic primary victory in Michigan, the far-left socialist has closed the gap with Republican Mike Rogers. According to RealClearPolling's average of polls, Rogers holds a 0.3-point lead over El-Sayed, a significant shift from an earlier poll that showed Rogers leading by 14 points.
In the WDIV/Detroit News poll in January 2026, Rogers led El-Sayed 48.0% to 41.6%, a 6.4-point advantage.
Considering that Michigan is home to one of the largest Muslim populations in the United States, Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch, believes the polls are inaccurate.
The U.S. Census does not ask residents their religion, so there is no official count of Muslims, but Michigan is home to an estimated 240,000-250,000 Muslims, making up roughly 2.4% of the state's total population. That forms a significant constituency in Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, Hamtramck and parts of Detroit.
"What I think that the pollsters are discounting is the fact that Islam is a very communal religion," Spencer tells AFN. "You don't really have any value as an individual; you only have value as part of the global Muslim community, and one of the manifestations of that communal idea is that Muslims, unlike every other group in the United States, tend to vote 100 to 0."
Their presence began taking shape in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, grew alongside Detroit's auto industry because of the city's industrial economy and an established immigrant network, and then expanded substantially with immigration waves from Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, South Asia and other regions.
"I believe that the support for Abdul El-Syed might be being underestimated," he summarizes.
Though Muslim voters do not have to elect Muslim candidates to exert their influence, they have produced a number of elected officials, including Rashida Tlaib, the first Muslim woman elected to the Michigan Legislature in 2008 and later one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress.
Abraham Aiyash represented Hamtramck and Detroit in the Michigan House and became the first Muslim and Arab-American majority leader of a state legislative chamber in the country in 2022.
And now, El-Sayed's Senate nomination represents a potentially much larger step. If he wins in November, he would be the first Muslim ever elected to the Senate, according to current reporting.
"I would actually be surprised if he were defeated," Spencer says.
