Abdul El-Sayed’s narrow victory in last week’s Democratic Senate primary in Michigan represents more than another local election. El-Sayed defeated Rep. Haley Stevens by less than one percentage point after outside groups supporting her spent more than $60 million, including more than $30 million from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and organizations associated with support for Israel. He won in a state that US President Donald Trump carried in 2024 and will now face Republican Mike Rogers in November.
But one of the most notable aspects of El-Sayed’s campaign was not only what he said, but where he said it and whom he chose to say it with.
El-Sayed, who has called for an end to US military aid to Israel, made new media a central part of his campaign. In the final days before the vote, he walked through Detroit with online influencers, met with content creators, and spent a significant portion of Election Day giving interviews to streamers before turning to traditional media outlets. One of the most prominent figures alongside him was Hasan Piker, an Israel hater and one of the most influential political voices on Twitch.
Piker appears alongside El-Sayed at University of Michigan, Michigan State University
The connection was more than symbolic. In April, Piker appeared alongside El-Sayed at the University of Michigan and Michigan State University. In Ann Arbor, hundreds of young people stood in the cold in a line stretching outside the venue. Veteran Rep. Debbie Dingell, who attended the event, said she had not seen a crowd like it at a political event that year.
The scene illustrated something American politicians are increasingly beginning to understand: Younger voters are not getting their news primarily from CNN, NBC, or newspapers. Increasingly, they are being introduced to politics through streamers.
Piker has more than three million followers on Twitch, and his daily broadcasts can last seven hours or more. From his home studio, he moves between online videos, news, gaming, jokes, and political analysis, speaking in a style far removed from that of a traditional television commentator.
More broadly, an entire ecosystem of podcasts, streamers, and content creators on the American Left is gradually becoming political infrastructure for progressive candidates. It gives them a way to bypass the Democratic Party’s traditional gatekeepers, recruit activists, and build loyal audiences. Piker is one of the clearest examples of the phenomenon.
When it comes to Israel, Piker leaves little room for ambiguity. He describes himself as an anti-Zionist who believes that “Zionism is a racist ideology.” Over the years, he has made particularly harsh statements against Israel and has even said that Hamas is “a thousand times better” than the Israeli government. He explained the remark as a comparison between the scale of killing, rather than as support for Hamas’s domestic policies.
His critics, including Jewish figures and Democratic politicians, accuse him of crossing the line between criticism of Israel and antisemitic rhetoric. Piker rejects that characterization and argues that his criticism is directed at the state and Zionism, not at Jews.
Piker says Israel bears responsibility for October 7
Even after October 7, Piker did not moderate his position. He has said that, in his view, Israel bears fundamental responsibility even for the events of October 7 because of decades of “occupation and apartheid.”
That worldview has made him a focus of controversy within the Democratic Party. His supporters see him as someone willing to say openly what the establishment refuses to say. His opponents see him as an example of the increasingly radical discourse toward Israel among younger Americans.
Piker’s connection to this political media world began before Twitch. His uncle, Cenk Uygur, who is also anti-Israel, is 56, was born in Istanbul, and moved to the US at age eight. Uygur founded The Young Turks, one of the oldest and most successful progressive news and commentary ventures online.
Piker, 35 and born in the US, began his professional career working for his uncle at TYT before gradually moving into streaming and becoming a full-time independent creator in 2020. If Uygur belonged to the first generation that proved it was possible to build a digital alternative to cable news, Piker represents the next generation: less a “news program” and more an almost daily relationship between the broadcaster and his community.
Despite all this, it is important not to attribute more power to the two than they actually have. They did not create the shift in attitudes toward Israel on the American Left by themselves, and Piker certainly cannot take credit for El-Sayed’s victory.
El-Sayed’s campaign held more than 500 events, visited 110 cities, and built a network of about 12,000 volunteers, according to campaign figures. But the campaign’s use of influencers such as Piker was deliberate, and El-Sayed intensified that approach in the final days before the vote.
The phenomenon also extends far beyond his campaign. Left-wing new media is becoming a meaningful part of fundraising, activist mobilization, and efforts to put new candidates on the political map.
In Michigan, that connection carries particular significance. The state is home to one of the most significant Arab-American communities in the United States, and the war in the Middle East has become a domestic political issue there. Arab-American leaders in the state said during the primary that attempts by the Democratic establishment to distance candidates and media figures because of their criticism of Israel could instead push voters to stay home, support a third-party candidate, or even shift toward Republicans.
This may be the most important significance of El-Sayed’s victory for Israel. It does not prove that all young Americans have become anti-Zionists, nor does it show that the entire Democratic Party is moving in Piker’s direction. Nearly half of primary voters supported Stevens.
But it does show that a candidate calling for an end to military aid to Israel can win in a key state, and that an openly anti-Zionist content creator with millions of followers is no longer merely an Internet phenomenon. He can share a stage with a Senate candidate, draw hundreds of young people to an event, and become a legitimate part of a national election campaign.
Israel is belatedly beginning to understand that this is no longer an arena that can be dismissed as marginal. The battle over American public opinion is not taking place only in briefing rooms in Washington or television studios in New York.
Part of it unfolds for hours every day in front of a webcam, in a rapidly moving chat on the side of the screen, and in clips cut from a seven-hour broadcast that can become political material on TikTok, X, and YouTube within minutes.
El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan is not Hasan Piker’s victory, but it provides strong evidence that the world Piker represents is already part of American politics rather than something operating outside it.