Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed narrowly carried rural Michigan over Representative Haley Stevens in the August 4, 2026, Democratic primary, according to county-level election results.
Ahead of Election Day, projections suggested Stevens would hold a significant advantage in rural parts of the state. However, when votes were counted, El-Sayed led Stevens by approximately 0.55 percentage points across rural Michigan. The rural vote provided a critical boost for El-Sayed’s statewide performance, helping him secure a win in the Democratic primary.
Across rural counties in Michigan, more than 212,000 voters cast ballots in the Democratic primary. El-Sayed received approximately 100,950 votes, or 47.55% of the rural vote. Stevens received roughly 99,770 of rural votes, accounting for 47.00%, while State Senator Mallory McMorrow received about 11,580 rural votes, or 5.45%.
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El-Sayed’s strongest rural performances came in northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula, where he posted substantial margins in several nonmetropolitan counties. He led Stevens by more than 20 percentage points in rural counties including Grand Traverse, Houghton, and Marquette, helping offset Stevens’ performance elsewhere in the state.
Although El-Sayed narrowly won the overall rural vote, Stevens carried more rural counties than El-Sayed. She won 37 nonmetropolitan counties, compared with 20 for El-Sayed. Many of those county-level races were highly competitive. In Gogebic County in the Upper Peninsula, for example, Stevens prevailed by just 14 votes. Statewide turnout was substantially higher than in Michigan’s last competitive Democratic U.S. Senate primary. Unofficial election results indicate that roughly 2.5 million Michiganders voted across all contests in the 2026 primary, including more than 1.5 million ballots cast in the Democratic Senate primary. A notable increase from the state’s 2024 Democratic Senate primary, which drew around 933,000 voters, with total participation across both parties’ presidential primaries that year around 2 million voters.
Rural voters represented approximately 14% of the turnout in this year’s Democratic primary.
Definitions of “rural” vary across organizations and researchers, which can result in differences in reported vote totals and margins. This analysis uses the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) 2013 nonmetropolitan county classification to define rural counties.
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