South Carolina Flips Blue as El-Sayed Leads Michigan Race

Washington (GNP): Democrats pushed deep into Republican territory in the 2026 US midterm elections, winning a Senate seat in South Carolina and holding a narrow lead in Michigan, even as Republicans held firm in Florida.

Together these three contests show a party winning where it has rarely competed, while Republicans kept hold of some of their own ground. They also help explain how Democrats are projected to have taken both the House of Representatives and the Senate for the final years of President Donald Trump’s term.

Michigan is the closest of the three. Democrat Abdul El-Sayed led Republican Mike Rogers 50.5 per cent to 47.7 per cent with about 41 per cent of the vote counted, while four independents split the rest. His margin had been 52 to 46 when nearly 20 per cent was in, and Rogers would need about half of the remaining ballots to overtake him. Votes still to come from Detroit-area counties could decide it.

El-Sayed, 42, is a physician-turned-public-health official who became Detroit’s health director at 30 and later led Wayne County’s health department from 2023 to 2025. He is not licensed to practice medicine, a point his opponents raised during the campaign. He lost the 2018 Democratic primary for governor to Gretchen Whitmer.

He launched his Senate bid in April 2025, backing Medicare for All and refusing political action committee (PAC) money. He won the August 4 primary with 48.5 per cent after Mallory McMorrow withdrew, defeating Representative Haley Stevens. He also drew criticism over remarks on Israel and apologised in August for comments made after a March attack on a Detroit-area synagogue.

Rogers and allied groups outspent him by roughly three to two, and Rogers lost narrowly to Senator Elissa Slotkin two years ago. A win would make El-Sayed the first Muslim and first Egyptian-American in the Senate. It would also show that a left-wing outsider can win in a state Trump carried in 2024.

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Florida shows where that momentum stopped. Republican Byron Donalds, backed by Trump, is projected to win the governorship and become the state’s first Black governor, replacing the term-limited Ron DeSantis. Republican Senator Ashley Moody is projected to have held the seat she was appointed to after Marco Rubio became Secretary of State, beating Democrat Angie Nixon, whose campaign funding could not match hers.

Democrats still found some success in Florida. Republicans had helped redraw the state’s voting maps to win more House seats, yet Democrats held all three districts that were redrawn in the Republicans’ favour.

The sharpest break with the past came in South Carolina, which Trump won by about 18 points in 2024. Democrat Annie Andrews, a paediatrician, is projected to have defeated Republican Senator Darline Graham. It is the party’s first Senate victory in the state in 28 years.

Graham was appointed in July after the sudden death of her brother, Senator Lindsey Graham, who had held the seat since 2002 and was one of Washington’s most influential foreign policy voices. The appointment won Trump’s support, but she entered the race as a political newcomer. During her primary campaign, when asked about Taiwan, Graham said, “National security is not my area of expertise, but I do support the military.”