DAVID MARCUS: Experts crowned El-Sayed then Michigan voters turned his win into a near-disaster

Over the past week, prior to far-left candidate Abdul El-Sayed squeaking to a possible victory over Rep.Haley Stevens in Tuesday’s Democratic Senate primary, the contest was treated by almost everyone in the news media as over, with El-Sayed a shoo-in.I had been in Michigan reporting on the race, and what I wrote was the exact opposite: It was clear to me the race was tightening, especially after the endorsement of Gov.

Gretchen Whitmer.So when I saw every subsequent poll giving El-Sayed double-digit leads, I was shocked and a bit nervous.Maybe, for the first time, the ground had lied to me and the numbers guys had this one right.

But once again, the ground coverage defeated the aerial polling.DEM PRIMARY ERUPTS AS ESTABLISHMENT FAVORITE DISMISSES RIVAL AS ‘CELEBRITY CANDIDATE’But by Wednesday morning, this race, in which El-Sayed held a 95% to 5% advantage in prediction markets, had not been called, with El-Sayed seeming to head toward a meager 1- to 3-point victory, with his total under 50%.Notably, Michigan state Sen.Mallory McMorrow, who dropped out of the race, still netted 4% — or, put another way, the difference.As for the polling, the last five public polls had El-Sayed winning by 19, 17, 14, 16 and 11 points, respectively.

The news media took this as gospel, and instead of covering a surging Stevens with a real chance to win — as I did — they covered an El-Sayed coronation pre-party.What surprised me so much about this polling was that in Detroit, after dozens of interviews, I couldn’t find anyone voting for El-Sayed who wasn’t already an activist in some way.The more ordinary the politics or occupation of the voter, the more likely that person was to support Stevens.DAVID MARCUS: IN BOOMING DETROIT, VOTERS SKEPTICAL OF SOCIALISM SNAKE OILAs I put it in these pages then, "Many Democratic voters I talked to wanted a steadier hand on the system, and they want to beat Trump and the GOP.

But they don’t want to blow up the system."Those vot...