CNN anchor Dana Bash said Thursday that poll results showing many Michigan residents would not vote for a Muslim presidential candidate are “just gross,” suggesting the prejudice could hurt Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.

Bash pointed to a slight lead that El-Sayed held over Republican Mike Rogers in the Washington Post poll, while deeming it a statistical dead heat. She mentioned that Democrats enjoyed an 8-percentage-point lead over Republicans in party preference.

But she then read poll data revealing that 45% of voters in the state would not choose a Muslim for president.

“Forty-five percent?” she asked political analyst Nia-Malika Henderson in disbelief.

“Barack Obama had to deal with this, right?” Henderson replied. “I mean, he had to deal with the reality that some people in 2008 were not comfortable voting for a Black man for president, a Black man that people thought was Muslim, and all that kind of stuff.” She said El-Sayed would have to overcome the bias.

Bash clung to the jarring statistic.

“Forty-five percent say they would not consider voting for a Muslim,” she said. “First of all, it’s just gross.”

She again called the discrimination “gross ― but that is what [El-Sayed] is contending with.”

El-Sayed is one of several progressive candidates whom Democrats hope will help flip the Senate and the House.

No Muslim has ever served in the Senate, and a handful of lawmakers in the House of Representatives are Muslim.

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