“America Big Enough for All of Us”: El-Sayed Becomes First Muslim US Senator

Democrat Abdul El-Sayed has won Michigan’s Senate seat, becoming the first Muslim elected to the United States Senate, as Democrats took control of both the House and the Senate in the 2026 midterm elections.

Fox News and Decision Desk HQ projected his victory over Republican Mike Rogers in the early hours of Wednesday. CBS News, which had rated the race a toss-up, initially held back from calling it before later projecting him the winner. Decision Desk HQ had El-Sayed on 51.89 per cent with 77 per cent of the vote counted.

“MICHIGAN, WE DID IT”

El-Sayed claimed victory before a crowd of supporters in Michigan. “Michigan, we did it!” he said. He said he was “so proud and honoured” to be senator-elect and thanked voters for taking a chance on “the unlikeliest of candidates.” “This is all yours,” he said.

He thanked people who had opened their churches, synagogues and homes to him on the campaign trail, and he answered the attacks made against him. His opponents, he said, “were targeting and attacking you.” His closing line was aimed at the Republican vision for the country. “They want an America that is too small for some of us,” he said. “We know that America is big enough for all of us.”

A BRUISING RACE

The contest was one of the most expensive and bitter of the cycle. Rogers, a former Republican congressman who narrowly lost the state’s other Senate seat to Elissa Slotkin in 2024, sought to cast El-Sayed as an extremist. He and his allies tried to link the Democrat to the Muslim Brotherhood, a charge El-Sayed rejected. El-Sayed also fought off Islamophobic attacks from Rogers and from President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

Two days before the vote, Democratic Representative Haley Stevens, whom El-Sayed had beaten in the August 4 primary by about a point, endorsed Rogers. Party leaders called it a betrayal, and some of her staff resigned. His campaign message was that money spent on the Iran war and on aid to Israel should be used to help struggling Americans.

WHO IS EL-SAYED?

El-Sayed, 42, was born in Michigan to Egyptian immigrant parents. A physician by training, he is a former health commissioner of Detroit and director of the Wayne County health department, and ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2018. He is a progressive, and his win keeps the seat that Democrat Gary Peters is retiring from in the party’s hands. Michigan is a state Trump won in 2024, and one any Democrat will need in 2028.

THE WIDER WAVE

The Michigan result was part of a sweeping national swing. Networks projected that Democrats would take the House and the Senate. Texas and Kansas elected their first Democratic senators in decades, and Democrats also flipped seats in Ohio, Iowa, North Carolina, South Carolina and Maine. Texas had not voted Democratic for the Senate since 1994, and the Kansas win broke what experts describe as nearly a century of conservative dominance.

Fox News data show four groups moved away from the Republicans in large numbers: young voters, independents, rural voters and Hispanic voters. Inflation, Trump’s tariffs and the war with Iran fed the dissatisfaction. CNN reported that voters also weighed concerns about the President’s conduct and perceptions of personal enrichment.

TRUMP’S RESPONSE

Trump told Fox News in a phone interview that he did not see the losses as a hit on him. “We’ve had the greatest two years in the history of the presidency in terms of the economy, in terms of all the things that we’ve done,” he said. He congratulated the Democrats. “They did a good job. They’ve been looking for this one for 11 years, and they finally got it,” he said, and blamed Republican defeats on candidates who failed to energise his base.

With inputs from ANI