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Michigan Students Are All In for Abdul El-Sayed

The progressive Senate candidate has won over students with his politics—and, in at least one case, his protein intake.

Parker Ward remembers every detail about his first time meeting Abdul El-Sayed. It was October 3, 2025, and El-Sayed was holding a town hall for Central Michigan University students, cohosted by the school’s College Democrats chapter, of which Ward is president. In the basement of a local Unitarian church, about 30 people showed up—half students, half Mount Pleasant community members.

“I loved listening to him, and I thought everything he was saying was awesome,” Ward recalls. El-Sayed spent his time answering the audience’s questions—discussing how people could connect across political divides, how AI policies affect students, and what community safety in the face of gun violence looks like. But as Ward was sitting there, listening intently to El-Sayed’s policy platform, he couldn’t help but notice something.

“I was like, ‘Oh my God, this dude is jacked,’” Ward remembers thinking to himself. After El-Sayed posed with the CMU College Democrats members for a picture following the event, Ward turned to him, shook his hand, and asked him the question that was at the top of his mind: “Abdul, how much protein do you eat in a day?”

“I don’t think he was expecting it, he just closed his eyes and laughed,” Ward recalls. El-Sayed gave him an answer: 180 to 182 grams of protein per day. It was, perhaps, the moment that Ward knew he was going to vote for El-Sayed.

“This dude is locked in,” Ward said. “I have to vote for him. I’m sold. That’s our next senator.”

Just over a year later, on October 9, more than a thousand students and local community members filled an auditorium at CMU to see El-Sayed speak. Where only a few dozen people had shown up to see the candidate a year before, now, the crowd was so big that some people had to be turned away at the door.

College campuses and young voters have always been a focal point of El-Sayed’s campaign. In 2025, El-Sayed held student town halls all around the state, visiting campuses from Wayne State University in Detroit to Northern Michigan University in the upper peninsula.

“It was really critical for us as we were building our campaign to go and listen to young people first, to engage them on the issues that are the most important in their lives,” El-Sayed told The Nation in January. “I see young people as being a foundational engine of this movement. And so it only made sense to start reaching out to them.”

That philosophy has paid off. In the August primary, El-Sayed won young voters by large margins, and led in major counties where the younger vote is concentrated. And come Election Day, a strong turnout from the youth voter bloc will be necessary for El-Sayed to beat Republican candidate Mike Rogers.

Over the course of a year, El-Sayed’s team has built up a network of campus fellows who run Students for Abdul chapters across college campuses in Michigan. To date, the campaign has 25 fellows, spread across 12 college campuses.........

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