Polymarket posted Tuesday that Democratic Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed had surged to a 72% chance of winning Michigan’s U.S. Senate race.
Polymarket is an online prediction market where people trade contracts based on the outcomes of future events. The percentages represent market-implied probabilities based on trading activity — not voter support or a traditional political poll.
So what does El-Sayed actually support?
El-Sayed has openly campaigned on abolishing ICE. His campaign released an ad literally titled “Abolish ICE” and says he has held that position since 2018.
He is also campaigning on Medicare for All. El-Sayed describes it as guaranteed health insurance through the government, provided from “cradle to grave” without premiums, copays or deductibles. His campaign says coverage should be automatic for everyone.
Universal healthcare and state-run healthcare are not the same sentence. One means everyone is covered. The other means the government runs the system. El-Sayed’s plan starts as the first and is built to become the second.
Medicare for All, as he describes it, does not begin by seizing hospitals or putting every doctor on the federal payroll. It begins by making the government the insurer for everyone. The federal bills this model is built on — including legislation El-Sayed has said he would co-sponsor — would then have Washington establish and annually update a national fee schedule setting payment amounts for covered services. In practice, the government decides what doctors, hospitals, and other providers get paid.
That is the path. Once the government is the payer for everyone, private insurance that covers the same care becomes unnecessary. In the Sanders-style bills he has backed, duplicative private coverage is generally barred. El-Sayed has told union audiences that employer or union plans “can still be there.” The legislation he has said he would co-sponsor would make those plans redundant. Providers who want to stay in business take the federal price. Patients who want care use the federal card. The remaining choice is not a competing insurance market. It is take the government rate, limit what you offer, or leave.
Call it universal coverage at the front end. What it leads to is state-controlled healthcare: the government holds the money, sets the prices, and decides the terms on which medicine is practiced. Ending premiums, copays, and deductibles does not end the cost of care. It moves the bill to taxpayers and moves the power to Washington.
El-Sayed has also previously supported government-funded healthcare coverage for people living in the United States illegally. His 2018 Michigan healthcare proposal said the state would not consider federal immigration-documentation status and that residents who pay Michigan taxes would be eligible. More recently, resurfaced remarks from a 2022 discussion showed him criticizing opposition to healthcare spending on illegal immigrants as a “deliberate, racist attack.”
That puts two of his immigration-related positions side by side: he supports abolishing ICE, the agency that enforces immigration law, and he has supported extending government-backed healthcare to people in the country illegally.
His healthcare platform also explicitly protects abortion and gender-affirming care. His campaign says healthcare decisions should be made by patients and doctors — and by parents when the patient is a minor — and specifically states that this includes both reproductive and gender-affirming care. He also says he would work to codify the abortion rights formerly protected under Roe v. Wade into federal law.
Taken together, the platform is government-funded healthcare without regard to immigration status, abortion and gender-affirming care as protected medical decisions — including for minors, with parental involvement — and abolition of the agency that enforces immigration law.
El-Sayed has additionally made clear that he intends to fight the Trump administration if elected. In a late-July interview with The New Yorker, he said that if he reaches the Senate, one of his jobs would be to “throw as much sand in the gears of the Trump Administration as possible.”
Those are some of the major positions behind the candidate whom Polymarket traders briefly priced at a 72% probability of winning Michigan’s Senate race — a prediction-market number, not a measurement showing that 72% of Michigan voters support him.