A great many constituencies in Michigan came together this week to power Democrat Abdul El-Sayed's victory in the U.S. Senate race over Republican Mike Rogers.
The contest especially meant a lot to Arab American and Muslim American voters. It's the first time a lot of Middle Eastern and North African voters might have had a chance to cast a statewide ballot for someone who shared aspects of their cultural background and, in some cases, their perspective on the issues.
Nura Sediqe is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Michigan State University, and she’s been looking at some of the key voting blocs that helped propel El-Sayed to a win. April Baer spoke with Sediqe on Stateside.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
April Baer: There was a lot at stake, and a lot of money pouring in, and a lot of eyes locked on this Senate race. What aspects specifically were you keeping an eye on this year?
Nura Sediqe: I was really interested in how the anti-Muslim sentiment that was pervasive in some of the campaign ads would impact Michigan voters in the way they see issues. I was also interested in voter turnout and whether we saw how much people prioritized domestic issues of affordability relative to some of the fear. Does fear win or does the economy win was really the frame I was thinking through.
AB: A lot of Arab Americans and Muslim Americans have seen language trying to link them, maybe them personally, with terrorism and you know, a lot of very hardcore Islamic ideologies that have nothing to do with their own lives. Is there anything you can tell us about how you've been trying to find out the effect that this had?
NS: So at Michigan State, we run a survey called the State of the State Survey with YouGov. And so, we had results come out from early the first two weeks of October. So this is a survey of Michigan voters, likely Michigan voters. And folks were asked if they would vote for a person who was Muslim. And 39% of people in the in the survey said they would not, if the candidate was Muslim, they would not vote for them. And so that's a very compelling statistic. If you think of it point blank, you know, that they're not hiding it. But you're looking at who the who are those 39%? It falls on partisan lines. A lot of them are already voting in the Republican camp and sort of affected by the discourse within that party. But there was still a penalty where coming into the election, what we saw was that Abdul paid a penalty for being Muslim relative to (Governor-elect) Jocelyn Benson, where he was trailing about five points in the pre-election surveys. And, if we controlled for everything else, what stood out was that it was simply his identity background as a Muslim that made him less likely to be voted on coming into the election relative to other Democrats at the top of the ticket.
AB: Did you get a sense that there was something in this contest that changed people's minds?
NS: I think the youth vote, in terms of the the mobilization early on, the excitement to sort of take an unlikely candidate and mobilize him forward to take on the selection of more established Democratic preferences really played an interesting role. And I think the way that there was cross pressures and concerns around the economy, I think Abdul's campaign … he actually was not the one to bring up identity issues. He was bringing up, you know, money out of politics, you know, like health care. And I think in a lot of ways, that is exactly the pulse of what has hurt everyday citizens in Michigan. Just like you see this wave of folks leaving the Republican Party because of economic concern across the country. So that's not unique to Michigan, but it was definitely felt in Michigan.
AB: I know another aspect of elections that you pay attention to is what we can learn of how Arab and Muslim voters have cast ballots. Can you share a little bit about how that's worked out in recent election cycles before this year?
NS: I should say that Arab Americans and American Muslims have been a really old community in Michigan, and they're very proud of having deep roots to the state, particularly Southeast Michigan, you know, a lot of auto workers with the auto industry. So you have a very established and old Black Muslim community in Michigan. ... For folks who are unfamiliar with, you know, the history of Black organizing that came from the Black Muslim tradition and is still a sizable, vibrant community in Detroit. And with Arab Americans, we're the only state in the country where we already have a sizable number of folks in local office, a couple mayors who are Arab American. And so you've seen, because they've been here multi generations, an investment in Michigan, in a way. And that shows in their policy preferences where, with the exception of 2024, their key issues of concern have been the same as other Americans polled. Health care, economy, jobs. Those tend to be at the top of their issue priorities in the same way it is for other voters. The only time you saw sort of divergence or sort of like a hiccup was in 2024, when foreign policy and the issue of Palestine sort of entered their voting calculus as an issue of concern.
AB: Is it too soon to know how voters who are who are Arab or who are Muslim might have cast their ballots this year?
NS: So what we know, we just received the data from likely voters from the University of Chicago's NORC Center where they pulled a sample of folks and they did an oversample of Michigan, and Arab and Muslim voters in Michigan. And so what we found in the pre-election polling is that of the Muslims that were polled, 97% said they were voting for Abdul El-Sayed and 84% for Jocelyn Benson. Interestingly, for Arab voters in Michigan, religion was a divide where Arab Muslims, 98% said they were voting for Abdul, and only 41% of Arab Christians. So Arab Christians are the anomaly. There were the anomaly in 2024. They were the subset that voted for Trump. Arab Muslims did not vote for Trump in 2024. They voted third party in precincts were there heavily Arab, or they voted Democrat Kamala Harris. It was Arab Christians that had voted for Trump. And then coming into this, you saw a split ticket where some did vote for Benson but did not vote for Abdul. But some have remained in the Republican Party. And so there is a larger conversation about the history of this subset of Arab Christian communities in Michigan and why their policy preferences look so different than other Arab Americans in Michigan.
