By Dearborn Blog
The night in brief
On Tuesday, November 3, 2026, Dearborn voted like a city that knew the country was watching. The City of Dearborn official election summary report, published in the early hours of November 4 with all 42 precincts reporting, records 45,460 voters cast out of 79,867 registered voters, a turnout rate of 56.92 percent. That is more ballots than Dearborn cast in the presidential election of 2024, more than in 2020, and far more than in any midterm in recent memory. Mayor Abdullah Hammoud called it the highest turnout in city history, and the official count supports the claim in raw numbers, even if the certified count may still move by a handful of votes.
The lines told the same story before the numbers did. Voters waited at Salina Intermediate School in the south end and at McDonald Elementary School on the east side, in precincts where a majority of voters are of Arab descent. Some polling places ran out of ballots late in the evening. The mayor posted on social media just before 7 pm urging voters to stay in line, reminding them that anyone in line before the 8 pm close had a legal right to cast a ballot. Early voting had already set a pace: on the Sunday before the election, 1,824 voters cast ballots during early voting, the highest one day total for early voting in Dearborn history, according to Maya Berry of the Arab American Institute.
Dearborn did not vote in isolation. More than 4.8 million Michigan voters cast a ballot in the 2026 midterm elections, according to unofficial results, up from 4.5 million in the 2022 midterms, a record for a Michigan midterm. All 83 Michigan counties shifted toward Democrats compared with the 2024 election, according to an Associated Press analysis. Wayne County moved the sharpest, by 14 points. Dearborn moved with that wave and then some, and the shape of the shift says a great deal about what this community wants, what it rewarded, and what it declined.
This article reports the public results as they stood on November 6, 2026. All of the figures below are unofficial until the county and state canvasses certify them later in November. Where a count was still incomplete, that is stated. No result here is presented as certified.
The turnout record, in numbers
The first fact to hold on to is the simplest one. Dearborn cast 45,460 ballots on November 3, 2026. The city cast 44,997 ballots in 2020, 31,269 in 2022, 42,923 in 2024, and 26,926 in 2025, when mayoral and council elections were held. The 2026 total beats the presidential year of 2024 by 2,537 votes, and beats the last midterm, in 2022, by 14,191 votes. Presidential elections usually draw more voters than midterms. In Dearborn this year, the midterm drew more.
The composition of the vote matters as much as the total. Of the 45,460 ballots, 9,182 were cast in early voting, 26,313 on Election Day, and 9,965 by absentee ballot. Early voting alone exceeded the entire Election Day turnout of many smaller Michigan cities. The turnout rate of 56.92 percent of registered voters is high for a midterm, and it came in a city where 34,407 registered voters still did not vote. That last number is not a footnote. It is the size of the community that did not take part, and it is the clearest measure of how much room remains for the next election.
Turnout was already running ahead of 2022 by 2 pm on Election Day, according to a data analyst at the Arab American Institute. The Free Press reported that enthusiasm at east Dearborn poll sites was visible all day, with voters describing a level of energy they had not seen in a very long time. One voter outside the Salina school precincts said the turnout was much better than expected. That is anecdote, not data, but it matches the count.
The record also has a practical meaning. A city that runs out of ballots has a logistics problem to fix before the next election, and a city that sets an early voting record has a habit to protect. Dearborn now has both a record to defend and a lesson to learn from the night itself.
What Dearborn chose at the top of the ticket
The headline race in Dearborn was the United States Senate race, and the result was not close. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee, won 37,025 votes in Dearborn, 82.16 percent of the 45,063 votes cast in that race. Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee, won 7,593 votes, 16.85 percent. The margin in Dearborn was about 65 points. Two years earlier, in the 2024 Senate race in Dearborn, Rogers had taken 39 percent of the vote against 41.4 percent for Elissa Slotkin, who won that race statewide. The swing in Dearborn between 2024 and 2026 is one of the largest in Michigan.
Statewide, El-Sayed won with about 52.3 percent of the vote to about 45.5 percent for Rogers, according to unofficial results with about 95 percent of precincts reporting. The Associated Press called the race at 2:27 am on November 4. El-Sayed, a Michigan born Egyptian American physician and former Detroit health director, becomes the first Muslim elected to the United States Senate. He takes the seat of Gary Peters when the new Congress meets on January 3, 2027.
In his victory speech in Detroit, El-Sayed answered the attacks on his name directly, telling the former president that after the vice president swears him in January, he can just go on and call him Senator. The line drew the loudest response of the night, and it captured the tone of a campaign that had been defined, in its final weeks, by attacks on El-Sayed religion and background, including claims about the Muslim Brotherhood and about sharia law that El-Sayed strongly denied.
The governor race followed the same pattern in Dearborn, at a slightly lower pitch. Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic nominee, won 32,617 votes in Dearborn, 78.78 percent, against 7,469 votes, 18.04 percent, for John James, the Republican nominee. Statewide, Benson won by about ten points. In Dearborn, her margin was about 60 points. The other statewide offices were similar: Garlin Gilchrist II won 78.93 percent in Dearborn for Secretary of State, and Eli Savit won 77.68 percent for Attorney General.
The straight party ticket tells the same story in a different form. Of the 26,717 Dearborn voters who voted a straight party ticket, 21,920 chose the Democratic Party, 82.05 percent, and 4,248 chose the Republican Party, 15.90 percent. The Democratic share of the straight party vote in Dearborn is one of the highest in the state, and it is the clearest sign that this election was not decided by a handful of swing voters. It was decided by a community that turned out in large numbers and voted, overwhelmingly, in one direction.
Arab American candidates won across the ballot
The Senate race was the headline, but it was not the only place where Arab American candidates won in Dearborn on November 3. The ballot in this city now carries Arab American names at almost every level, and on this night most of them won, often by large margins.
Rashida Tlaib, the Palestinian American Democrat who represents Michigan 12th District in the United States House, won a fifth term. In Dearborn she took 34,888 votes, 80.40 percent, against 7,299 votes, 16.82 percent, for her Republican opponent. District wide, she won by about 76 percent to 21 percent. Tlaib has represented the district since 2019, and her Dearborn margin this year was larger than her statewide district margin, a sign of how strongly her home city backs her.
Abbas Alawieh, the Democratic nominee for State Senate District 2, which includes Dearborn, won 34,081 votes in Dearborn, 80.09 percent, against 7,667 votes, 18.02 percent, for his Republican opponent. Alabas Farhat, the Democratic state representative for House District 3, won 22,691 votes in the Dearborn portion of his district, 84.68 percent. Jalal Abdallah, the Democratic state representative for House District 15, won 10,379 votes in the Dearborn portion of his district, 70.46 percent. Each of these is a Dearborn result, not a district wide total, and each shows the same pattern: Arab American candidates winning their home city by margins of 40 points or more.
The university boards added two more Arab American winners. Amir Makled, a civil rights attorney from Dearborn, was elected to the University of Michigan Board of Regents. In Dearborn he won 32,428 votes, 43.05 percent of the votes cast in a vote for two race, and statewide he won about 25.5 percent, enough for one of the two seats. Shereef Akeel, a Troy civil rights and human rights attorney, was elected to the Wayne State University Board of Governors. In Dearborn he won 31,657 votes, 41.66 percent, and statewide about 25.6 percent. Both boards kept their Democratic majorities, and both now include Arab American members elected statewide.
The judicial races added still more. Mariam Saad Bazzi won 25,463 votes in Dearborn, 52.89 percent, in the Court of Appeals First District race. Helal A. Farhat won 15,446 votes, 12.22 percent, in the Circuit Court Third Circuit race, where voters could choose up to 16 candidates, and finished at the top of that large field in Dearborn. Aliyah S. Sabree won 20,797 votes, 97.18 percent, in a partial term Circuit Court race. These are nonpartisan races, with no party labels on the ballot, and the Dearborn vote in them followed the same community pattern as the partisan races.
The Free Press, reporting on the mobilization behind these results, quoted Abed Hammoud, who ran for mayor of Dearborn in 2001 as the first candidate of Arab descent to seek that office. Hammoud said the landscape is different now, and that the energy is different. Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab American News and a community leader in Dearborn for more than 40 years, told the Free Press that the community has broken several ceilings and opened many doors, and that this election would take it further. The results support that reading. Twenty five years after Hammoud lost that mayoral race in the months after September 11, Dearborn now sends Arab American candidates to the Senate, to Congress, to the state legislature, to university boards, and to the bench, and it does so with votes to spare.
None of this happened by accident. El-Sayed visited mosques across Wayne County on the final Friday before the election, including the Islamic Center of America on Ford Road in Dearborn, and his campaign built small groups for specific communities, such as Yemenis for Abdul and Iraqis for Abdul, two groups that had voted heavily for Trump in 2024. Fundraisers in Dearborn and Oakland County raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for his campaign in the final weeks. The Arab American Political Action Committee held its annual banquet in Dearborn on October 28, with El-Sayed in attendance. The mobilization was organized, funded, and visible, and the turnout figures are its receipt.
The Green vote, in Dearborn and statewide
The Green vote in Dearborn on November 3 tells a different story, and it is the story that deserves the closest reading. In 2024, Dearborn gave the Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein 18.37 percent of the vote, with Donald Trump at 42.48 percent and Kamala Harris at 36.26 percent. That was a protest vote on a scale rarely seen in American politics, driven by anger at the Biden administration handling of the war in Gaza and Lebanon. Two years later, the Green vote in Dearborn collapsed back to the low single digits in almost every race on the ballot.
Start with the straight party ticket. Only 199 Dearborn voters chose the Green Party straight ticket, 0.74 percent of the 26,717 straight ticket votes cast. The Green share was smaller than the Working Class Party share, 154 votes, and far smaller than the Democratic and Republican shares. A straight ticket vote is a vote for a party, not a person, and on that measure the Green Party in Dearborn is a small party.
The individual Green candidates did a little better than the party label, but not much. In the governor race, Douglas Campbell, the Green nominee, won 574 votes in Dearborn, 1.39 percent. In the Secretary of State race, Eric Borregard won 518 votes, 1.24 percent. In the Attorney General race, Jeff Polonowski won 627 votes, 1.52 percent. In the Senate race, Douglas Marsh won 95 votes, 0.21 percent. In the House race, Brenda Sanders won 275 votes, 0.63 percent. In the Michigan State University trustee race, John Anthony La Pietra won 836 votes, 1.14 percent. In the Wayne State governor race, Paul Ragan won 543 votes, 0.71 percent. With one exception, every Green candidate on the Dearborn ballot finished between two tenths of one percent and about one and a half percent.
The exception is the State Board of Education race, and it is a large one. Wissam Charafeddine, the Green Party nominee for the State Board of Education, won 4,792 votes in Dearborn, 6.36 percent of the 75,335 votes cast in that race. That is more than eight times the vote of the Green gubernatorial candidate in the same city on the same night, and more than fifty times the vote of the Green Senate candidate. It is the strongest Green result in Dearborn in this election by a wide margin, and it deserves to be understood on its own terms rather than folded into a general story about the Green vote.
Wissam Charafeddine: what 4,792 votes in Dearborn mean
First, the arithmetic. The State Board of Education race is a vote for two race. Each voter may choose up to two candidates, so the percentages in the official report are shares of total votes cast, not shares of voters. Charafeddine won 4,792 votes out of 75,335 total votes, which is 6.36 percent of votes. But 4,792 votes from 45,460 voters means that about one voter in ten in Dearborn marked his name on the ballot. That is a different and more honest measure of his support in his home city, and it is a strong one for a third party candidate in a race where the two Democratic incumbents won 26,948 and 27,299 votes in Dearborn, and the two Republican candidates won 7,080 and 6,629 votes.
Second, the statewide picture. The Associated Press, with 86.47 percent of precincts reporting, counted 42,149 votes for Charafeddine statewide, against 2,377,440 for Judith Pritchett and 2,351,997 for Tiffany Tilley, the two Democratic incumbents who won the two eight year terms. The Free Press reported Pritchett at 26.5 percent and Tilley at 26.2 percent of the votes cast statewide, with the Republican candidates at about 22 percent and 21.5 percent. On that basis, Charafeddine won about half of one percent of the votes cast statewide in the race. He did not win a seat, and the Democrats kept their 6 to 2 majority on the State Board of Education. The statewide result is not in doubt, and this article does not present it as close.
Third, the Dearborn contrast. Charafeddine won about one vote in ten from Dearborn voters, and about one vote in two hundred statewide. That gap is the story. Dearborn is his home, his base, and the community where his work as a founder of the W Institute, as a coding educator, and as a public voice on computer science education is best known. His campaign platform centered on universal access to computer science education, on rigorous teacher informed standards for education technology, and on family engagement in schools. Those are local issues with a local audience, and in Dearborn that audience answered.
It is also worth saying plainly what the Dearborn result is not. It is not a sign that Dearborn is becoming a Green city. The straight party Green vote was 0.74 percent, and the Green candidates for governor, secretary of state, attorney general, Senate, and Congress all finished below 2 percent in Dearborn. Charafeddine outperformed his party by a large margin because voters were choosing a person they knew, in a down ballot race where personal recognition matters more than party label, not because they were choosing the Green Party as a whole.
The comparison with 2024 makes the point sharper. In 2024, Jill Stein won 18.37 percent in Dearborn as a protest against the Democratic Party handling of Gaza. In 2026, the Green candidates who offered a similar protest, without a local name attached, won between 0.21 percent and 1.52 percent. The protest vote did not disappear. It moved. It moved to El-Sayed, a Democrat who campaigned on health care and the cost of living, who visited Dearborn mosques, who spoke about spending money inside America instead of funding wars in southern Lebanon and Gaza, and who won 82.16 percent in Dearborn. It moved to Tlaib, to Alawieh, to Farhat, and to the other Arab American Democrats on the ballot. The voters who punished Democrats in 2024 did not become Green voters in 2026. They became Democratic voters again, once the Democratic ticket included candidates they trusted to hear them.
That is the hard lesson of the Green vote in this election, for the Green Party and for anyone who reads 2024 as a permanent realignment. A protest vote is a loan, not a transfer. It is given for a reason, and it can be called back when the reason changes. In Dearborn in 2026, the reason changed because the candidate at the top of the ticket changed. Charafeddine kept a meaningful share of that protest vote in his own race, because he was known and because his platform spoke to local concerns. His party, as a party, did not.
What the lines and the ballot shortage say
Turnout is not only a number. It is also an experience, and on November 3 the experience in Dearborn included long lines and, late in the evening, empty ballot boxes at some precincts. The mayor urging voters to stay in line is a sign of a system under strain, not a sign of a system working smoothly. A record turnout that runs out of ballots is a success with a warning attached.
The warning matters because the voters who waited were not all seasoned voters. Many were first time voters, and many were voters who had sat out recent elections and returned for this one. A first experience that ends in a long wait, or in a precinct with no ballots, is an experience that can discourage the next vote. Dearborn should treat the ballot shortage as a planning failure to fix, with more ballots printed, more early voting days staffed, and more precincts prepared for a turnout that now has a new record to beat.
The early voting record points in the same direction. Sunday early voting drew 1,824 voters, the highest one day early total in Dearborn history. Early voting is now a large part of how Dearborn votes: 9,182 early votes, plus 9,965 absentee votes, together made up more than 42 percent of all ballots cast. A city that votes early needs early voting to be easy, well staffed, and well publicized, not treated as an afterthought to Election Day.
What Dearborn should hear in this story
Dearborn voted in record numbers, and it voted for representation. The first Muslim United States senator, a fifth term for its Palestinian American member of Congress, a new Arab American state senator, Arab American state representatives, Arab American university board members, and Arab American judges. That is not a single victory. It is a bench, built over decades, from the first Arab American mayoral campaign in 2001 to the present, and it is now deep enough to fill a ballot from top to bottom.
Dearborn also voted for a return. The voters who left the Democratic Party in 2024 over Gaza came back in 2026, not because they forgot Gaza, but because the Democratic ticket gave them candidates who spoke to their concerns and who they believed would fight for them. The 65 point margin for El-Sayed in Dearborn, against a 6 point Trump win in the same city two years earlier, is the largest swing in the city modern political history, and it was driven by the same voters who made the earlier swing.
And Dearborn voted, in one race, for a neighbor. Wissam Charafeddine did not win a seat on the State Board of Education, and his statewide vote was small. In Dearborn, about one voter in ten marked his name. That is a real achievement for a Green candidate in Michigan, and it is also a clear limit. It shows that a local candidate with a clear platform on education can earn a hearing in his home city, even when his party cannot earn a hearing anywhere else. It also shows that a hearing is not a victory, and that the work of turning local recognition into statewide support remains undone.
The certified results will follow later in November, and the numbers above may move by a small amount. The shape of the story will not move. Dearborn turned out in record numbers, chose Arab American representation at every level, returned to the Democratic Party with a candidate it trusted, and gave its own Green candidate a strong local vote that his party could not match. That is a city that knows what it wants, and that is learning, election by election, how to get it.
Sources and References
- City of Dearborn, Election Summary Report, November 3, 2026 General Election, unofficial results, 42 of 42 precincts reporting, published November 4, 2026, 12:42 am. https://dearborn.gov/sites/default/files/2026-11/ElectionSummaryReportRPT42of42_AVandEV.pdf
- City of Dearborn, Election Results and Data. https://Dearborn.gov/resources/voting-elections/electionresults
- Detroit Free Press, Arab, Muslim voters mobilized for election: The energy is different, November 4, 2026. https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2026/11/04/arab-american-and-muslim-voters-mobilized-for-michigan-election/92575160007/
- Detroit Free Press, Michigan sees record voter turnout for the 2026 midterms, November 4, 2026. https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2026/11/04/michigan-record-turnout-2026-midterms-blue-wave/92609483007/
- Detroit Free Press, Dems sweep races for Michigan education and university boards, November 5, 2026. https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2026/11/05/michigan-election-state-board-education-university-boards-results/92517029007/
- Associated Press, Election results: State Board of Education, Michigan, November 3, 2026, precincts reporting 86.47 percent. https://apnews.com/projects/elections-2026/?ap_doc=ap%2Frg1%2FWyJhcC92Mi8yMDI2MTEwMy9sLzI0MTE3L01JL3MiLFsiMTY2NTY5IiwiMTc4ODkzIiwiMTc4OTc1Il1d
- Associated Press, Election results: U.S. Senate, Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, November 3, 2026. https://apnews.com/projects/elections-2026/?ap_doc=ap%2Fv2%2F20261103%2Fl%2F24463%2FMI%2Fs%2F67151
- Associated Press, Election results: U.S. House, Michigan, Rashida Tlaib, November 3, 2026. https://apnews.com/projects/elections-2026/?ap_doc=ap%2Fv2%2F20261103%2Fl%2F23816%2FMI%2Fs%2F67177
- Detroit Regional Chamber, This Week in Government, November 6, 2026, El-Sayed support in Detroit, southeast Michigan, and Dearborn. https://www.detroitchamber.com/nov-6-2026-this-week-in-government/
- Muskegon Tribune, How Abdul El-Sayed, Jocelyn Benson won Michigan: Big turnout, Democratic shifts, November 4, 2026. https://muskegontribune.com/how-abdul-el-sayed-jocelyn-benson-won-michigan-big-turnout-democratic-shifts/
- Detroit Free Press, Abdul El-Sayed win: How it happened, impact of his historic victory, November 4, 2026. https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2026/11/04/abdul-el-sayed-michigan-election-result-winner-senate/92609142007/
- Getty Images, Muslim voters in city of Dearborn, Michigan reject Democrats over Gaza stance, November 7, 2024, reporting Dearborn 2024 results: Trump 42.48 percent, Harris 36.26 percent, Stein 18.37 percent. https://www.gettyimages.ie/detail/video/democrats-traditional-stronghold-of-dearborn-michigan-news-footage/2183438103
- Quarter Detroit, Michigan voted blue: Benson is the next governor, El-Sayed goes to the Senate, Democrats take Congress, November 3, 2026. https://quarterdetroit.com/michigan-election-2026/
Editorial Disclaimer
This article reports unofficial election results as published by the City of Dearborn, the Associated Press, and the Detroit Free Press as of November 6, 2026. Results remain unofficial until certified by the county and state canvasses later in November, and final certified totals may differ by a small amount from the figures reported here. Vote shares in races where voters may choose more than one candidate, such as the State Board of Education, are shares of total votes cast in that race, not shares of voters, and this article states both measures where they differ. The analysis of why voters chose as they did is the judgment of Dearborn Blog, based on the public results and reporting cited above, not a claim about the motives of any individual voter. Dearborn Blog is not affiliated with any candidate, campaign, or political party.
