congresswoman from north Detroit. As far as can be told she did nothing at all. Three months out from polling day, the race in Michigan is shaping up to be one of the most hotly contested Democratic primaries in the country. Gary Peters, the incumbent, is retiring. So unpopular is Donald Trump that our model gives Democrats a strong chance of taking the Senate, but to do so they will have to win Maine and then two Republican-held seats won comfortably by the president in 2024. What they cannot afford to do is to lose Michigan, which plumped for Mr Trump by a margin of just 1.4%. Our model suggests they ought to win by seven points. But the choice of candidate could change that substantially. Each of the three represents a different faction of the Democratic Party. Who wins will reveal a lot about how the party’s voters want to approach the general election. The race is also a test of how much opposition to Israel, and to the war in Iran, will matter. Start with Ms Stevens. Unlike the other two, she is already in Washington, representing a district covering Detroit’s northern suburbs. Her most prominent backer is Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, and his machine. After that is AIPAC, the pro-Israeli lobby group. Her list of endorsers is as long as Lake Michigan. But her campaign is deathly quiet: she has hosted at most a handful of open events this year, if that, and she was booed at the state party convention last month. Ms McMorrow is louder (she arrived at the same convention followed by a marching band). She first gained national attention in 2022 with a powerful speech responding to a Republican colleague who had called her a “groomer” over her support for gay and trans rights. These days she styles herself as a policy technocrat who will disdain partisan warfare. She argues that if “MAGA Republicans” can be beaten, “more sane, rational, traditional Republicans” will re-emerge like crocuses. Her backers are the sorts of Democrats who consider themselves to be sensible progressives, such as Senator Elizabeth Warren. Most boisterous of all is Mr El-Sayed. The son of Egyptian immigrants, he studied medicine at the University of Michigan, but instead of pursuing a residency he went into public health (this has not stopped him misleadingly
referring to himself as a “physician”). He wants to introduce universal health care, end all military aid to Israel and ban corporate political spending. The biggest problem with American politics, he says, is “the system that allows corporations and billionaires and special interests to buy and sell politicians”. His most prominent backer is Senator Bernie Sanders. In past elections Democratic primary voters in Michigan have been older, whiter and more female than the electorate in general, and have disdained radicals. In 2018, Mr El-Sayed ran for governor, and was defeated by 22 percentage points in the primary by Gretchen Whitmer, a more traditional Democrat. At the age of 41 he has served in political jobs for most of his career without ever winning an election. But might the electorate have changed? Mr El-Sayed’s events, including one with Mr Sanders on May 3rd, are drawing big crowds. “I feel more angry at the Democratic Party than [at] Trump”, says Annemarie Carlson, a 28-year- old charity worker at his Detroit rally. Mr El-Sayed’s fans reckon the party is in hock to rich donors, out of touch and barely deserving of power. Ms McMorrow and Ms Stevens are pinning their hopes on Democrats who are slightly less full of rage at their own side. The wild card in the race is AIPAC. Ms McMorrow and Mr El-Sayed expect a wall of negative ads, paid for by the group, to hit them soon. After Ms Stevens, AIPAC’s preference ought to be obvious. Ms McMorrow, who has a Jewish husband, says what Israel has done in Gaza and Lebanon is “an abomination”. But she also worries that some voters are “not being anti Netanyahu, but anti-Jew”. Mr El-Sayed by contrast has happily campaigned with Hasan Piker, a Twitch streamer who has praised Hamas. (Mr El-Sayed says he disagrees with many of Mr Piker’s views.) And yet AIPAC’s influence is unpredictable. “They have a ton of money and use it stupidly,” says one Democratic strategist in the state, speaking anonymously because of his (unrelated) campaign work. In a special election primary in New Jersey earlier this year, Analilia Mejia, another angry populist backed by Mr Sanders, beat a moderate critic of Israel attacked by AIPAC. Ms Mejia’s House seat, however, is a safe one. What the party’s stalwarts fear most in Michigan is that primary voters may be about to risk the Senate on a far-left, unelectable candidate. ■
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Leftist populism’s next big test In Maine, Graham Platner is betting centrist and right-leaning voters want economic revolution more than culture war May 21st 2026 Graham Platner, the oyster farmer rocketing to Democratic celebrity nationally as he campaigns for Senate in Maine, is testing two hypotheses that could reset his party’s direction: that the censorious left can sometimes ignore past, regretted transgressions such as fascist tattoos or bigoted social- media posts; and that voters in the centre and even on the populist right are far more drawn to economic causes such as universal health care than they are repelled by cultural ones he also believes in, such as welcoming transgender athletes into girls’ sports. Mr Platner’s commitment to the second hypothesis has already helped him prove the first. Revelations of past misbehaviour have not slowed his
momentum. A little hypocrisy in politics should surprise no one; it is simply more obvious on the high-church left, as it also is on the Evangelical right, because of the particular stress those movements place on purity. But just as the right has withheld its sanctimony from champions of its own, such as Donald Trump, the left has embraced Mr Platner because he looks to be their kind of winner. Janet Mills, the sitting two-term governor, gave up a bid for the Senate late last month. Despite her own popularity with Democrats, she bowed to the inevitability that Mr Platner—a college dropout whose previous public roles were serving as a harbourmaster and chair of his local planning board— would crush her in the primary in June. He is the presumptive choice to run against Susan Collins, a Republican in her fifth term, in a race Democrats see as essential to winning a majority in the Senate. Mr Platner is right to argue that, if anything, attacks over his tattoo (now inked over) and social-media posts (deleted) have helped him. They remind voters—or, at least, those Democrats paying attention—of what captivates them, that he has been hewn by hard knocks into a candidate struggling Americans may recognise as one of their own. As a Marine infantryman, Mr Platner, 41, served four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He got the tattoo, of a skull and crossbones, while on a break with comrades, not knowing it was associated with Nazism, he has said. He has said he wrote extreme statements on Reddit, a social-media site, in a time of alienation and depression brought on by his trauma from combat. Returning to his hometown of Sullivan in eastern Maine to work on the water led him to “feel connected again”. It certainly helps Mr Platner that, as he speaks in his gruff baritone, he radiates sincerity. It also helps that his explanations are reasonable (and that some of his posts were anti-fascist diatribes). “Rage-posting on Reddit was a thing, you know,” says Caitlin Murphy, a Marine, recalling her own return from service as she waited to hear Mr Platner speak at a veterans’ hall in Portland on May 17th. “What do you expect? He’s come a long way. He’s grown.” It probably most helps Mr Platner that he is not a heretic like Jared Golden, another Marine and Democrat who, four times, has swum against the