Why nearly 100 Muslims won national, local races in the US midterm elections

At least 97 Muslim Americans have won their races in this week's midterm elections, encompassing the federal, state, and local levels, according to the Council on American Islamic Relations (Cair). It's hard to imagine that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's landslide win last year didn't have an impact on his fellow Muslims who hadn't entertained the possibilities. More than a dozen other candidates are still awaiting the full ballot count - depending on individual county rules and the way mail-in votes are handled - but they are ahead of their opponents as of Friday morning. They come from a pool of 168 Muslim-American candidates who made it past the primary stage of their races, which is when they compete within their own party to earn the nomination. Seven Muslim Americans are headed to Washington, DC. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters Six are going to the House of Representatives, including incumbents Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Andre Carson, and Lateefah Simon; and they will be joined by freshmen Adam Hamawy and Darializa Avila Chevalier. If Aisha Wahab secures her win, which had not been decided by Friday morning local time, she would also join the incumbent House members. One Muslim American is going to the Senate: Abdul El-Sayed. He will be the first to ever serve a six-year term in the upper chamber. Cair has tracked 39 other statewide offices where Muslim Americans won, ranging from attorney general to the state legislature and the state senate. At the county and municipal level, there are 16 winners, and education and school boards saw 27 Muslim-Americans elected. Eight were elected to be judges. The wins make for an all-time record, and come as anti-Muslim sentiment and rhetoric, particularly among Republicans, is at its highest in a generation, according to groups like Muslim Public Affairs Council (Mpac), the Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSO), and the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU). Policy over party Muslims make up just one percent of the US population, at some 5.5 million people. But they receive an outsized amount of media scrutiny and online attacks. Mpac had warned prior to Tuesday's elections that voter intimidation tactics may also keep Muslim American voters from going to the polls. But Muslim voter registration rose by at least 25 percent over the past year, and at least one survey showed a 93 percent turnout to the ballot box. Eighty percent said they primarily voted for Democrats, compared with six percent for Republicans, Cair found. 'Muslims tend to vote more based on policy than party lines' - Urooj Ali, Georgia Voter Project NBC's exit polling takes that further and shows that it was Muslims, out of all the faith groups or none at all, who voted the most for Democrats. For comparison, in 2024, the ISPU said more than 20 percent of Muslim Americans voted for Donald Trump, as he pledged to end all wars and boost affordability. "From our field programme... we are seeing that Muslims tend to vote more based on policy than party lines. So a lot of them actually identify as independent rather with the Democratic Party or with the Republican Party," Urooj Ali, the communications director for the non-partisan Georgia Voter Project, told Middle East Eye. Georgia is a highly coveted swing state in the American South, and as of Tuesday, it has two Democratic senators and a Democratic governor - the first black woman to win the office. "Georgia actually broke a midterm election record for early voting this year, so it was the highest voter turnout for early voting in a midterm election," Ali said. "Around 30,000 Muslims voted early this election cycle, and for context, in 2022, only 36,000 Muslims voted total, including election day." Of the four hijab-wearing Muslims who are now state senators-elect, Georgia's Ruwa Romman is among them. In the US, citizens have to be registered to vote, and in most cases before election day - otherwise they will be turned away. Some states, like Michigan, allow for same-day registration. Defiant Over the last month, there have been several anti-Muslim incidents across the US, ranging from vandalism featuring explicit graffiti across several buildings in California to threats to shoot hijabi women in Illinois and even one shooting at a Mosque in California that killed a security guard. That mosque shooting came shortly after CSO issued a 36-page report entitled "Manufacturing the Muslim Threat", revealing that "Republican elected officials built a coordinated anti-Muslim campaign involving 1,111 social media posts, eight bills, and a 62-member congressional caucus" in 2025, meeting the criteria of "speech likely to inspire violence". US midterm elections 2026: Record number of hijabis elected to statewide and national offices Read More » Cair's survey showed that Islamophobia was a key factor in moving Muslim Americans this election cycle, with 70 percent saying that anti-Muslim sentiment motivated them to vote. The ISPU, which created the National American Islamophobia Index, showed a steady rise in such sentiment in its latest findings from 2025, saying that on a scale of 0 to 100, the index jumped from 25 in 2022 to 33 in 2025. The jump was most pronounced among white Evangelicals (15 points), Catholics (12 points), and Jews (11 points), the ISPU said. But the incidents have not had the intended effect of scaring Muslims away. Sameerah Munshi, who was the sole Muslim woman to serve on the Advisory Board of Lay Leaders on Trump's Religious Liberties Commission before she resigned in protest in March, told MEE that the changing demographic of Muslim Americans means this generation is more emboldened and defiant. "I'm basically Gen Z, so I didn't really get a full understanding of the 9/11 aftermath and how things were," she said. "I think this generation of us who have grown up with that in mind... we didn't really, I think, experience the hopelessness that a lot of Muslims who were adults or who were voting at that time felt, and I think that's kind of pushed this generation to really be politically engaged." Munshi insisted that the way popular culture has come to challenge pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian language and laws over the past three years has also encouraged Muslim Americans to take a stronger stand. Cair's survey showed that 76 percent of voters named Gaza and Palestinian human rights among their most important issues, and 80 percent specifically said Israel's assault on Gaza, which the United Nations and Holocaust scholars call a genocide, was a "major influence" on their vote. "We've been seeing on our social media platforms that big people like Tucker Carlson have flipped," Munshi said. "All these establishment Democrats are slowly making way for these progressives who are pro-Palestine, and who are very adamantly against the state of Israel." Former Vice President Kamala Harris famously lost her bid for the presidency in part because of a refusal to abandon her unconditional support for Israel as it was killing up to 300 Palestinians a day in Gaza - most of them civilians. Intersectional values When Munshi resigned, it was in protest against a crackdown on a Catholic colleague's defence of Palestinian rights. 'At James Talarico’s victory speech, you had people holding ‘Love Thy Neighbor’ signs. That is the same as saying “alhamdulillah” on stage. That’s the same expression' - Haris Tarin, Vice President MPAC Carrie Prejean-Boller was removed from the panel, whose members are appointed by Trump himself, by Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, chairman of the Religious Liberty Commission. Patrick lost his re-election bid on Tuesday after 12 years in office. He was handily defeated by the first Democrat to take up the post in nearly three decades, and the first woman in the state's history. Deep-red Texas, from the governor down, went almost wholly blue this week. Senator Ted Cruz, who has often engaged in anti-Muslim rhetoric, remains the only Republican in a senior role in the state. Despite being a self-described Christian, Cruz has attacked two Democrat preachers who have been newly elected to the Senate, specifically for their inclusion of Muslims and Palestinians in their religious positions. Cruz's new colleague and the other senator from Texas, James Talarico, has said that Islam, like Christianity, is an "equal pathway to truth". He has also said that "seeing what's happening in Gaza makes me sick to my stomach as a teacher, as a Christian, as a human being" on actor Ilana Glazer's podcast. Adam Hamilton, the first Democratic senator to be elected in Kansas in nearly a century, has said he believes Christians will meet Muslims in heaven, leading to Cruz's outrage. And shortly after the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, Hamilton, who has longstanding connections to Palestinian Christians, highlighted in an interview the "underlying problem that keeps these kinds of things (violence) coming to the surface - that also needs to be understood if ever there’s going to be peace". Both Hamilton and Talarico, much in the same vein as senator-elect Sayed, have honed in on their religious lifestyles rather than shying away from them to run for a party that has typically eschewed outward acts of faith. "Sometimes progressives get that we are a faithful, religious nation," Jamiah Adams, a communications expert and founder of Believers Consulting, told MEE. Religious Americans of all faiths, she said, "are values-based people... [and] our values are not being meted out right now." "Those candidates who uplifted their faith and talked about how their values align with what they want for their constituents, they were successful because they spoke in that values conversation." Sayed's fiery victory speech in the early hours of Wednesday morning began with an "inshallah" and then an "alhamdullilah", and his campaign was centred on his religiosity as a Muslim who takes a break five times a day to pray. "Historically, Democrats didn't know how to talk about faith," Haris Tarin, vice president for policy and programming at Mpac, told MEE. "They were scared to talk about faith. They actually tried their best to run away from talking about faith. What [Tuesday] showed was that the Democrats who actually lean into their faith, whatever their respective faith may be, it works, because Americans want authenticity and they want people who actually believe in who they are themselves." "At James Talarico's victory speech, you had people holding 'Love Thy Neighbor' signs. That is the same as saying "alhamdulillah" on stage. That's the same expression," Tarin added. Identity politics While Muslim Americans specifically see Islamophobia and Palestine as core issues at election time, they still mainly vote just like the vast majority of their compatriots: on the economy and job creation, according to polling carried out by the ISPU. And just like voters, candidates who identify as Muslim make that, for the most part, just a slice of who they are. Mamdani ran a mostly secular campaign, and then somewhat leaned into his faith after he was elected. Sayed, on the other hand, has said he is devout and that his commitment to his religion is why he felt fit to run. Not all Muslims are progressives or Democrats at all. Abe Hamadeh, who was just re-elected to the House of Representatives, representing Arizona, is a Republican who has received Trump's endorsement. The Republican Party, under this president and the influence of The Heritage Foundation, is staunchly pro-Israel and has assumed a largely anti-Muslim stance. In a written statement provided to MEE by the non-partisan Muslim Americans in Public Service, its chair, Ahmad Maaty, said he is "incredibly proud to witness the growing number of Muslim Americans stepping into public service and positions of leadership across our country". "Seeing members of our community increasingly represented in elected office and civic institutions is both inspiring and meaningful. These victories reflect years of community engagement, perseverance, hard work, and the growing participation of Muslim Americans in shaping the future of our communities and our country. They are a reminder that our voices matter, our participation matters, and we have a meaningful role to play in the decisions that shape our lives." US midterm elections 2026: Abdul El-Sayed becomes first Muslim elected to Senate Read More » Junaid Ahmed, who identifies as a Muslim progressive and lost the Democratic primary in Illinois' 8th District in March, said the slate of newly elected Muslim officials from this week represents a win for diversity more than anything else, given that Muslims are a plethora of races, ethnicities, and points of view. "[This] just takes it to the next level, right? The people of colour... I'm very hopeful. I'm very excited," he told MEE. "Hopefully, what this House and Senate does is show the American people that when we say 'America First', that starts showing in the policy." Ahmed told MEE he is planning a bid for the House of Representatives again in 2028. Ali, with the Georgia Muslim Voter Project, said there is no "agenda" rooted in the actual identity of being Muslim American, other than "leading with the community care aspect". Being Muslim is more of a way of life rather than an identity," she told MEE. "It's more... to ensure that like we are leaving the world a better place than we received it."