What we learned from Tuesday’s midterm primary elections

Summary

Elections in five states underscored that momentum of progressive candidates remains strong but not unstoppable Abdul El-Sayed wins Michigan Senate primary Tuesday’s primary elections in five states will be looked back on as a marquee moment ahead of November’s midterm elections, as voters in Michigan, Washington, Virginia, Kansas and Missouri selected candidates for races that could decide which party wins control of Congress. Here’s a rundown of what we learned from the results: Michigan was the site of a bitterly contested Democratic Senate primary in which moderate congresswoman Haley Stevens faced former public health official Abdul El-Sayed , a progressive, in a state that Donald Trump won two years ago. Ahead of Tuesday’s vote, polls showed El-Sayed with a firm lead over Stevens, who had the backing of Governor Gretchen Whitmer as well as top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer, and his campaign projected confidence accordingly. But the election turned out to be a squeaker, with El-Sayed winning 48.5% of the vote to Stevens’s 47.5%, the Associated Press reports, far from the blowout polling appeared to show. Republicans nominated former congressman Mike Rogers, who narrowly lost the race for the state’s other Senate seat two years ago. El-Sayed’s victory underscored the continued momentum of progressive candidates, who have been on a roll in primaries in New York and Colorado as they harnessed discontent among Democrats with party leadership and their traditional support for Israel. Adding to the movement’s trophies was William Lawrence, the co-founder of climate change activist group the Sunrise Movement, who clinched the Democratic nomination for the battleground seventh congressional district in central Michigan. In Detroit, progressive Donavan McKinney succeeded in ousting Congressman Shri Thanedar, who had been backed by groups aligned with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac). And four years after voters in heavily Republican Kansas approved abortion protections in the state constitution, they turned back a GOP-backed attempt to have state supreme court judges popularly elected rather than appointed by the governor. Michigan’s Democratic voters chose their fighters in Tuesday’s primary for a Senate race that could determine whether the party returns to the majority in the chamber, as well as for vital House races.