WHEN DEMOCRATS HATE TRUMP BUT DON’T LIKE THEIR OWN CANDIDATE. A Fox News poll that came out last Thursday struck fear in some Democrats around the country. The poll concerned the Michigan Senate race, but part of it touched on a phenomenon that Democrats worry might be repeated elsewhere: That the ongoing conflict between the party’s moderate and progressive/DSA wings will diminish otherwise loyal Democrats’ desire to support party nominees in November.
The headline from the poll was that it found Republican Mike Rogers leading Democrat Abdul el Sayed — the DSA-adjacent Democrat — by four percentage points, 51% to 47%. While that was good news for Rogers, the margin was still within the range of a very close, essentially tied race.
The concerning thing for Democrats came with the data inside the horserace numbers. Among Republicans, 96% said they intend to vote for Rogers. But among Democrats, just 91% said they intend to vote for el Sayed. More specifically, enthusiasm among black voters appears less than what Democrats will need to win; among those voters, 75% said they will vote for el Sayed, but 22% said they will vote for Rogers.
Democrats do not win if one-fifth to one-quarter of black voters leave the party. Perhaps the poll identified temporary frustration among those Democrats and they will come home by election day. But if the frustration is lasting — that’s a big problem for Democrats.
The numbers are particularly concerning in the context of deep disapproval of President Donald Trump among Democrats and many other voters in Michigan. Basically, this is all about Trump; Democratic strategists are counting on their voters’ antipathy to Trump to turn into votes for Democrats. So the worry is: What if Democrats and independents who really, really dislike Trump still won’t vote for the Democrat in the Senate race? What happens then? Well, what happens is that the Democrat will lose.
The Fox News poll found that 58% of those surveyed have an unfavorable opinion of Trump, with most of them having a strongly unfavorable opinion. Among Democrats, 96% have an unfavorable opinion of Trump, and among independents, 78% have an unfavorable opinion. (Among Republicans, Trump’s unfavorable number is 19%.)
So will all those Michiganders who can’t stand Trump vote for el Sayed? Not necessarily, according to the Fox poll, which found that 74% of those who view Trump unfavorably plan to vote for el Sayed, but 23% plan to vote for Rogers.
In addition, the poll found that 54% of voters overall in Michigan are concerned that el Sayed’s positions on issues are “too extreme.” Among those with an unfavorable opinion of Trump, 35% said they had such concerns about el Sayed.
Now pull out to the big picture. “If Abdul el Sayed is only at 47% in a state where 58% disapprove of Trump, that’s…a problem,” The New Republic’s Greg Sargent wrote on X. “To get there, el Sayed has to overcome doubts among a whole lot of voters who disapprove of Trump but aren’t yet willing to support el Sayed.”
In a conversation with Sargent, Bloomberg and CNN analyst Ron Brownstein noted that, “There’s just no precedent for Republicans winning a Senate race in a state where Trump is that unpopular.” Nevertheless, “el Sayed is way underperforming among the [Trump] disapprovers.”
What will happen in Michigan, Brownstein argued, will likely depend on what the people who disapprove of both Trump and el Sayed — voters known in the politics business as “double haters” — decide to do.
“The odds are high that there is going to be a big chunk of voters, maybe as much as 20%, who have an unfavorable view of el Sayed at the end…but also disapprove of Trump,” Brownstein said. “So how do they vote in the end? In the past, double haters have tended to vote against the party in the White House. But Republicans hope that el Sayed is such a reach for those voters that they can win more of them than they usually do. And I think that will be the pivot point of this race — people who disapprove of Trump and are somewhat hesitant about el Sayed.”
Calling el Sayed “such a reach” is one way of suggesting that he is so far to the left, and so entangled with objectionable characters, that even liberal voters can’t accept him. He’s not just another progressive Democrat who wants Medicare for all. “He may not be a self-identified democratic socialist, but he’s an unapologetic ally of democratic socialists like [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez and the influential Twitch streamer Hasan Piker,” the New York Times’ Nate Cohn wrote Sunday. “He’s defined in part by his support for progressive causes, like opposing Israel’s actions in Gaza. To this point, he has campaigned as a firebrand, often with the language to match.” (To illustrate, Cohn linked to an article in The Guardian that began, “Abdul el Sayed said his comments that progressives need to put the head of an ‘ogre’ on a pike was a reference to the Senator John Fetterman — not to his opponent, Representative Haley Stevens” — as if putting Fetterman’s head on a pike would be OK, while doing the same to Stevens would not.)
So el Sayed is doing his part to alienate possible supporters, and the race hasn’t even shifted into high gear. Noting the “double haters” in Michigan, Republican strategist Brad Todd added that such a situation — voters who don’t like either candidate — isn’t all that unusual. But this one might be different. “The risk Democrats have with el Sayed is he is more objectionable than most any Michigan Democrat,” Todd wrote on X. “Democrats should have drummed el Sayed out of the race from the jump instead of appeasing their kooks.”
But they didn’t. And their decision could determine who controls the Senate starting next year.