El-Sayed Won. The Polls Did Not.

Summary

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GD POLITICS Podcast: "El-Sayed Won. The Polls Did Not."

Date: August 5, 2026
Host: Galen Druke
Guests: Mary Radcliffe, Nathaniel Rakic, (Brief appearances by Caitlin)

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Episode Overview

This episode of GD POLITICS dives into the surprising results of the Michigan Senate Democratic primary, where Abdul El-Sayed narrowly defeated Haley Stevens—despite polls predicting a comfortable El-Sayed win. The panel explores why polling missed the mark, what the results reveal about Democratic coalitions, the dynamics of open primaries, and how similar issues could manifest in upcoming races, notably in Wisconsin. The conversation is rich with insider perspectives, relatable anecdotes, and a healthy skepticism towards pre-election polling.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Michigan Senate Primary — The Upset and the Polling Miss

[03:55]

• As of recording, Abdul El-Sayed led Haley Stevens by less than 1 point (48.48% to 47.51%).
• Pre-election polls showed El-Sayed with a 13-point lead—matching the size of the eventual polling miss.
• Open primaries in Michigan complicate likely voter modeling: "Anybody can pull a ballot for whichever primary they please. Those are particularly difficult to poll because it’s difficult to know who is likely to vote." — Mary Radcliffe [04:50]
• Polling challenges: Underestimation of rural voters and misreading the strength of candidates in rural areas.
• Haley Stevens overperformed in rural Michigan, a key component missed by pollsters: "She has way more strength in the rural parts of Michigan than was expected." — Mary [05:41]

2. Open Primaries and Voter Behavior

[07:00]

• Michigan's open primary allows independents and even Republicans to vote in the Democratic primary, introducing unpredictable voting patterns.
• Galen notes possible "messiness" in who actually votes, especially in areas with minimal Republican primary action.

3. Why Are Polls Missing?

[07:52 - 11:11]

• Pollsters may be over-indexing highly engaged, college-educated, or young voters who are more likely to respond to polls.
  • "Are these the wrong young voters? Are these young voters that are particularly engaged... which in this case would be Francesca Hong in Wisconsin?" — Mary [08:30]
• Ongoing adjustments in polling models often swing too far based on the last error, creating new biases.
• Comparison to recent national polling trends, where errors shift depending on which party was over- or underestimated the previous cycle (e.g., 2020, 2025).

4. The Coalition: Who Votes for Who?

[12:19]

• The panel notes an irony: candidates branding themselves as champions of marginalized or working-class communities tend to attract college-educated, white, and more elite Democratic voters.
• Stevens did better with working-class and voters of color, including Black voters—contrary to progressive narratives.
  • "It creates this narrative tension... the people who actually really like them are kind of the elites... not actually the people who are hardest out." — Galen [13:23]
• Nathaniel underlines that this is consistent with national trends: "The progressive wing of the party is disproportionately white. Black voters, in particular, are actually quite moderate." [13:36]

5. Woke Politics and Racial Coalitions

[14:20 - 17:01]

• Mary discusses the possible backlash to "WOKE one" and its hyper-focus on racial categories, noting that "the obsessive nature of the racialization of everything, I think, for some voters of color was like, please stop." [14:20]
• Galen and Mary analyze how policies or language that signal revolution or instability may turn off voters focused on security and stability—concerns particularly salient to middle-class or working-class communities, including many voters of color.

6. Michigan Demographics Deep Dive

[18:06]

• Michigan’s Wayne County as a microcosm: includes Detroit (Black voters), Dearborn (Middle Eastern and Muslim voters), and swingy suburbs.
• Caution about reading raw county numbers—diversity within counties can obscure their meaning.

7. Preview: Other Races and Down Ballot Trends

[19:27]

• The Michigan 7th Congressional District also saw a progressive win without a majority, indicating instability in both wings’ coalitions.
• Brief allusion to important referenda outcomes in Kansas and Missouri, and the evolving establishment-vs-progressive battles nationwide.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On polling anxiety and trauma:
  "It was like basically... we got laid off. But that happened, right? Exactly. I mean, it was clearly like an echo of the 538 genie politics." — Nathaniel Rakic sharing an election-night dream [00:22]

• On Michigan polling failures:
  "We don't fucking trust Michigan polls. Primary polls at least." — Mary Radcliffe [04:45]
  "The average polling error in statewide primaries... is 13 points. So this is bad, but this is not like profound for the polling industry." — Galen Druke [06:42]

• On progressive vs. working class coalitions:
  "That candidate does really well with the sort of college educated, more elite set within the Democratic Party. But Haley Stevens did better with working class people and voters of color." — Galen Druke [12:43]

• On the shifting meaning of revolution:
  "By definition, a revolution creates instability. And a revolution is what the left part of the party is talking about. And that might not be appealing to the middle part of the country... who used to be reliable Democrats and are now reliable Republicans because the Democratic coalition is basically rich and poor." — Galen Druke [15:14]

• Comic relief regarding holidays:
  "We learned that [Francesca Hong] basically hates every holiday on the American holiday calendar, including Thanksgiving, Halloween, Valentine's Day and Christmas..." — Galen Druke [09:10]

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Important Timestamps

• [03:55] — Current Michigan results and polling miss introduced
• [04:50-07:52] — Deep dive into why polling failed in Michigan primary
• [08:30] — Mary flags over-indexing of highly engaged young or progressive voters in polls
• [11:11] — How pollsters’ attempts to adjust may create new errors
• [12:19-14:20] — The progressive/elite and working-class/POC split in Democratic voting
• [14:20-17:01] — WOKE one and ‘revolution’ politics backlash discussion
• [18:06] — Nuance of Michigan’s Wayne County and racial demographics
• [19:27] — Other down-ballot Michigan results and House races

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Tone & Style

The episode is conversational but rigorous, combining insider expertise with humor and relatable election-night exhaustion. The team routinely self-corrects, pokes fun at both the polling industry and themselves, and is frank about uncertainty ("they're not just fluid, they're literally gaseous"), making complex political trends accessible and engaging for listeners.

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For more analysis and extended discussion, visit GDPolitics.com.

Transcript

[Galen Druke]

Hey there, listeners.

[Caitlin]

A quick note that the AP had not yet called the Michigan Senate primary race for Abdul El Said when we recorded this episode. Although NBC had called it, we suggested that El Said would likely be the

[Galen Druke]

winner and discussed it as a very close race.

[Caitlin]

But any uncertainty that remained when we recorded this episode has since been resolved.

[Galen Druke]

All right, here's the show.

[Nathaniel Rakic]

I had a very unpleasant dream that was relevant to you guys. It was. It was. It was very sad. It was like basically like, you know, that we got laid off. But that happened, right? Exactly. I mean, it was clearly like an echo of the 5:38 genie politics.

[Caitlin]

Those fuckers.

[Nathaniel Rakic]

Right? But like, in the dream, we had already been laid off from 538 and we were at a new place, podcasting, but this place was much stricter. And so they, like, you know, like, they like, kicked us out and they had. We had to sign like, these NDAs that said we can never do a podcast together again. And I couldn't talk. For some reason, I wasn't allowed to talk to any of my friends who were still at the company. And it's just this very emotional thing. And anyway, so that's the kind of thing that happens when you are. When you run on four hours of sleep after having talked to all of your journalist friends.

[Galen Druke]

Yeah, I was going to say your election night anxiety manifested in an interesting way. It had actually nothing to do with the election in the end. Hello and welcome to the GD Politics podcast. I'm Galen Druke. Instead of recording a late night Michigan reaction podcast, we are recording a relatively early morning podcast, although at quarter to nine eastern time this morning, August 5th, we actually still don't have a call in the Michigan Senate primary from most of the outlets that would be calling. So NBC did end up calling the race for Abdul El said last night we can debate whether or not that was too early. And in fact, we probably will. The interesting thing is we usually say on this podcast that for our purposes, for understanding the American electorate, the direction that politics are moving in, the margin matters more than the winner. We're not here to vote for it, root for a team. We're here to understand America. And on one hand, we do have enough information to now say how the Democratic electorate in Michigan is feeling. But because this is a primary, it kind of does actually matter who wins, because in order for us to talk about the dynamics of the general election, we have to know who the candidate will actually be. So we can talk about that a little bit, maybe, but we have quite a bit to discuss after last night's primaries, nonetheless. And of course, there weren't just elections in Michigan last night. We do have some calls in congressional races in Michigan, but there were of course, also elections in Kansas, Missouri, Washington, Virginia. And so we're going to discuss some interesting results there as well. And here with me, our trusty GD Politics contributors, Nathaniel Rakic and Mary Radcliffe. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. In the news this morning. Good morning. To quote an icon, Ann Curry, maybe that's a deep cut, but how are you guys doing?

[Mary Radcliffe]

I'm all right. I actually got like, I don't know, six hours of sleep.

[Galen Druke]

About the same. Yeah, yeah.

[Nathaniel Rakic]

I went to bed at three, woke up at eight. It's really, you know, if you've done enough of these election nights, you know, you know, when, when is the time to turn in and when to get back when you still have a little bit of energy. So.

[Galen Druke]

Well, on the livestream, we decided that that moment was 10:30. As Mary pointed out, I didn't eat a large enough dinner. And so by 10:30, I. Even if I really wanted to keep going, I mean, it was pretty clear we weren't gonna get results. But I was like, guys, I've got to pee and eat some food.

[Mary Radcliffe]

Yeah, I think by 10:30 we were kind of spinning our wheels.

[Galen Druke]

Yeah, yeah. But let's dig into the results that we have. So at this very moment, I'm looking at the New York Times results page. Abdul Al Said leads by less than 1 point. It is. He's 48.48% to Haley Stevens, 47.51%. The polling averages suggested a 13 point lead for Abdul El Said going into the night. It looks like that is going to be a 13 point miss in the end. Mary. Unfortunately, not all of our phone calls are recorded for the sake of a podcast. And I don't want to be congratulatory because this didn't happen on a podcast and we never went on the record. But we had a conversation earlier in the day on Tuesday where we were like, we don't fucking trust Michigan polls. Primary polls at least.

[Mary Radcliffe]

Yeah, I had this conversation with multiple people actually, that, like, I didn't think that it was going to be as. As big of a victory for El Salad. And I wouldn't be completely shocked by Haley Stevens win primary polling. We, we've talked about this before, but primary polling, especially in states that run open primaries where anybody, you don't have to be registered as a Democrat or a Republican to vote in that party's primary Anybody can pull a ballot for whichever primary they please. Um, those are particularly difficult to poll because it's very difficult to understand who is likely to vote in those elections. Right. We don't have, oh, only Democrats can vote. So we just poll the Democrats and then whatever. You have the whole state available and you have to try to figure out what kind of people in that state are going to vote in that election. What I think is really fascinating about the polling. Ms. In this particular race is Haley Stevens has kept this very, very close and as we said, there's a chance she could still win here, although it's pretty unlikely. But she's done it in a way that the polling did not suggest. She has way more strength in the rural parts of Michigan than was expected from the pre election polling. So, like, this may be a case where pollsters underestimated how many rural voters would vote, how strongly those voters would favor Stevens over El Sayed. Right. Like, there seems to be some clear problem in like estimating what that likely electorate looks like. On the flip side.

[Galen Druke]

Hold on, hold on. Sorry.

[Mary Radcliffe]

Yeah.

[Caitlin]

Are you telling me that pollsters are

[Galen Druke]

missing working class voters in rural parts of the state and therefore underestimating, I guess, the more to the right candidate.

[Mary Radcliffe]

Are you shocked, Caitlin?

[Galen Druke]

I mean, and I think, look, we should say a couple things here before we get like too snooty or whatever. The average polling error in statewide primaries, so Senate and gubernatorial races is 13 points. So this is, this is bad, but this is not like profound for the polling industry.

[Mary Radcliffe]

Yeah.

[Galen Druke]

And to put a finer point on what you just said, Mary, this also means that like, folks who, first of all, the Republican primary for Senate has not been particularly contentious. So a lot of folks may not have been paying attention at all in the more rural parts of the state where there are a lot more rural areas. Republicans, you don't, it's not just that independents can cast ballots in the Democratic primary, Republicans can also cast ballots in the Democratic primary. So there could be folks who maybe lean more to the right who decided to cast a ballot in this race. Now, look, if you're an out and out Republican, it's very unlikely that you're like taking time out of your summer in early August to go vote in a Democratic primary for people who you probably don't like, like either candidate. But like, there is, this does get messy in terms of, like you said, what the electorate looks like.

[Mary Radcliffe]

Yeah, exactly. And so I think that's like really behind a lot of what happened with this polling. Ms. There's also an interesting theory, perhaps pollsters are over indexing on like highly engaged voters, which is very difficult to like wait out in a survey because we can't really test tell who those people are. So if you're like, we've been pulling as you know, with state navigate, we've been polling in Wisconsin. We're getting a lot like super high response rate with young voters now perhaps. And by super high, I mean like close to 2%.

[Nathaniel Rakic]

Wow.

[Mary Radcliffe]

I know. But the question is, are these the wrong young voters? Are these young voters that are particularly engaged in the process very excited about their candidate, which in this case would be Francesca Hong in Wisconsin. And so they're answering polls at this like really high rate, which is skewing those results toward the more progressive candidate that's animating those young voters. We will see. Right. Like, it's quite possible that Wisconsin polls are also overstating Francesca Hong by a similar 13 points. Now if they are, she's still sailing to a victory in that state because she's ahead by 20 plus in most of the pre election polling.

[Galen Druke]

Although things remain, things remain. As Jacob Robashkin said on the podcast earlier this week, they're not just fluid, they're literally gaseous. They're approaching plasma state in Wisconsin because of all of the moves that have happened as of late. And each day we learn something new about Francesca Hong. Like we recently learned that she basically hates every holiday on the American holiday calendar, including Thanksgiving, Halloween, Valentine's Day and Christmas at least gone and has gone on the record and has gone on the Record on Twitter with posts that she did not delete. And she's also defended hating Thanksgiving on cnn.

[Mary Radcliffe]

I don't love Thanksgiving personally just because I don't like turkey, but Christmas, first

[Nathaniel Rakic]

they came for Thanksgiving and I said nothing, but then they came for Christmas.

[Galen Druke]

She's like, turkey, I can leave it ham, we need it.

[Mary Radcliffe]

It's about the Legos.

[Galen Druke]

It's about the Legos. All right, there you go. I mean, I don't look, I'm truly shooting from the hip here, but there has been a lot of stuff that has happened in that Wisconsin guber and there's still a week for more stuff to happen. Couple weeks and there's still a week more of stuff to happen. And we will see if between the seeming sort of over indexing on young college educated voters in Michigan, maybe a sort of a Democratic electorate that is tuning into this result and being like, maybe, maybe we should reconsider. And also more news coming out about

[Mary Radcliffe]

Francesca Hong and I will say, I will say State Navigate is in the field right now in Wisconsin taking another look at that race. And we are hoping that we get some initial demographic data out of this Michigan race before we release that survey on Friday so that we can take a look at our weighting parameters and see how well reflective they are of what we are actually seeing in similar races in the country. So fingers crossed that we are able to adjust appropriately.

[Nathaniel Rakic]

Yeah, yeah. One of the other factors, you know, obviously related to what Mary said, but you know, I think that in, in the same way that it's always challenging to predict the direction of general election polling misses because pollsters, they, they react to conditions on the ground. Right. So, you know, obviously you've seen a number of high profile misses which have benefited Republicans like Democrats were overestimated in the polls in, in years like, you know, 2020 and 2016, but pollsters have, you know, changed their methods. And so, for instance, in the 2025 elections, polls really overestimated Republicans and, and Democrats were the beneficiary of the polling error. And so I think in the same way, I wouldn't be surprised if pollsters looking at the results of Democratic primaries so far this year have been like, oh, the energy is really with the progressive side of the party and have kind of been modeling their likely voter electorates in that way. And if you're going to do that, you, you might miss a like surge in support for a candidate like Haley Stevens. So I do think there are a lot of reasons primaries polls do have this error and why this could have happened. And like Mary and Galen said, it's not necessarily unusual.

[Galen Druke]

We haven't talked about the other piece of this polling message, which is not just rural voters in Michigan, but also black voters in Michigan who are another key part of Haley Stevens's coalition. And that brings us to this interesting dynamic where Abdul Al Said has branded himself as the candidate of the marginalized, of the working class, of we're going to make conditions better for working people. We've talked about this on the podcast before, but interestingly, that candidate does really well with the sort of college educated, more elite set within the Democratic Party. But Haley Stevens did better with working class people and voters of color, which I think the, the, he, you know, Abdul Al Said is not part of the dsa, but like the DSA or the more progressive part of the party would like to claim as the people that they are working on behalf of. And so it creates this narrative tension for the left part of the party that like, the people who actually really like them are kind of the elites and the tastemakers and the people with the loudest voices within the party, but not actually the people who are hardest out.

[Nathaniel Rakic]

Yeah. I mean, this is a well documented phenomenon. Right. You know, the progressive wing of the party is, you know, disproportionately white. Black voters in particular are actually quite moderate. You know, Jim Clyburn famously, you know, you know, has been a champion for moderate candidates, starting with Joe Biden, including Haley Stevens. Yes, yes. So I'm certainly not surprised in that. I also think, like, Haley Stevens really leaned hard into her association with the Obama administration. You know, she helped do the, you know, with the auto companies and, you know, obviously I think that Obama remains quite popular, really, among all Democrats, but especially black Democrats. So. Yeah, I wasn't surprised to see those results.

[Mary Radcliffe]

Yeah, I think that there are ways in which some of the racial politics of, like, WOKE one probably turned off some voters of color. I know that's like a crazy. That sounds like a weird thing to say, but, like, the obsessive nature of the, like, racial. Racialization of everything, I think for some voters of color was like, please stop. Right. Like coming up with new words to describe things we already have words for. And, like, it was a lot. And I think that can be a turnoff, especially if those new words are supposed to apply to you as a person.

[Galen Druke]

Yeah, I mean, that's maybe a more academic read on it. But WOKE one, as you've taken to calling it, also really took aim at. And I talked about this with Joan Williams, so this is not an original thought for people who are regular listeners to this podcast, but really took aim at the pillars of personal security in American life, like the police and border enforcement and things like that. That for, you know, people who live in just very relatively well to do homogenous areas don't probably, you know, that's an. That's an academic thing. You can say, well, that's all racist or whatever. But people who live in neighborhoods that. Where they're made to think more about their security and safety and so on on a regular basis and stability in general. Right. Like creating a settled life for oneself is more of a priority for the middle part of the country than the elites. And so anything that suggests perhaps I want to shake everything up, I want to create, like, shake. By definition, a revolution creates instability. And a revolution is what the left part of the party is talking about. And that might not be appealing to the middle part of the country by which I don't mean like the geographic middle, but like the middle 50% of voters who used to be reliable Democrats and are now reliable Republicans because the Democratic coalition is basically rich and poor. And so I think that gets added. You might say, like, what about Donald Trump? He kind of promised a revolution. He promised in part a revolution, but against the sort of political incumbents and so on. But still talked constantly about law and order and stability and sort of the forgotten people and whatnot. So I think it's a different kind of a revolution than what the DSA might be suggesting. Does that make sense?

[Nathaniel Rakic]

Yeah, I don't think he ever used the word revolution either. Maybe he did, but not as explicitly, I think.

[Galen Druke]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was, you know, outsider versus the inside, et cetera.

[Mary Radcliffe]

Well, I wanted to say, before we get off of this, I wanted to say though, I actually thought Stevens might do a bit better with black voters in Michigan than she actually did. Her lead in Wayne county is only 6 percentage points, which is below the benchmark that I had in my brain in advance of this election. Now to be fair, all my benchmarks were wrong because based on the pre election polling, I wasn't expecting her strength in the rurals. So like, okay, maybe I should just throw away whatever my pre election benchmarks were. But I do think it's worth like just like putting a flag in here to see how things evolve with the racial coalitions within the Democratic Party as some of the like stalwart older black voters start to go on to their reward and we see more younger non white voters taking their place.

[Nathaniel Rakic]

I mean, I think it's worth noting that Wayne is a very diverse county. Right. So it is about 37% black, but there are also, I mean it's majority white. It's got a significant Middle Eastern population which is kind of unique and obviously I'll say it as is Middle Eastern himself. So I think I haven't seen a precinct map, but I would imagine he does well in places like Dearborn. So I'm not sure, I'm not sure exactly how well Stevens did with black voters just based on that number.

[Mary Radcliffe]

That's true, that's true. And to be fair, I grew up in Wayne county in a very swingy part of the county. Right. Like it is, it is a, an interesting purpley place when you get out of the city and into the suburbs. So to be clear for voter, for listeners, Wayne includes Detroit, which is a lot of black voters. It also includes Dearborn, which is majority Muslim community. And then it includes a huge swath of the suburbs of Detroit which are suburban and swingy because they're suburbs. So this is like, this is like

[Galen Druke]

the Romney family's estate, right?

[Mary Radcliffe]

Yes, yes it include and but not just that. Also just like standard issue middle class suburbs, which is where I grew up. So.

[Galen Druke]

Yeah, but you didn't grow up on a compound, Mary.

[Mary Radcliffe]

I did not grow up in Grosse Pointe, no.

[Galen Druke]

I want to talk a little bit more about the general election and so on, but because that is getting out over our skis a little bit, I want to look at other races that happened last night first. So before we move on from Michigan, we did get some calls in House races there, maybe most prominently Michigan's 7th district, which also features a progressive versus establishment divide. The progressive candidate ended up winning but without 50% of the vote. So maybe some, maybe some lessons for the establishment there. Mary's shaking her head. What happened?

[Mary Radcliffe]

The progressive in the race.

[Caitlin]

William Lawrence that's the end of today's Preview. Head to GDPolitics.com to become a paid subscriber and catch the full episode. Mary, Nathaniel and I sorted through the results from Tuesday night for about an hour. We talked about what Abdul El Said's win means for the general election in Michigan this fall. We also talked about how progressive versus Establishment fights played out down ballot in House races and the role that data centers are playing statewide in Kansas and elsewhere. Also, there were two small d Democratic referenda on the ballot in Kansas and Missouri that voters came down decisively on.

[Galen Druke]

We discussed those.

[Caitlin]

Like I said, head over to GDPolitics.com to catch the whole thing. For eight bucks a month or 80 bucks a year, you'll get twice the number of episodes and will help ensure that we can keep making this independent podcast again. Gbpolitics.com Hope to see you there.