Biden faces a substantial number of ‘uncommitted’ votes. Here’s the latest.

 

Nicholas Nehamas

Reid J. Epstein

Nicholas Nehamas and Reid J. Epstein Nicholas Nehamas reported from Dearborn, Mich., and Reid J. Epstein from Washington.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/02/27/us/trump-biden-michigan-primary-election

 

Biden faces a substantial number of ‘uncommitted’ votes. Here’s the latest.

Read four takeaways from the 2024 presidential primaries in Michigan.

 

President Biden won Michigan’s Democratic primary election on Tuesday but faced opposition over his support for Israel as it wages war in Gaza, with a substantial number of voters casting ballots for “uncommitted” as part of a protest movement against him.

 

Former President Donald J. Trump was also victorious in the Republican primary, coasting past former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina to continue his undefeated primary streak. The Associated Press called both races as final polls closed at 9 p.m.

 

The results demonstrated how both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are confronting enduring weakness within their parties, with meaningful numbers of Democrats and Republicans voting against them even as they race toward a November rematch.

 

In the Democratic primary, Mr. Biden faced his most significant challenge not from another candidate but from Arab American voters, progressives and young people protesting his support for Israel by choosing the “uncommitted” option on their ballots.

 

Early results showed that “uncommitted” had already received far more support than the roughly 11,000 votes by which Mr. Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in Michigan’s 2016 general election — the initial goal publicly set by the protest campaign’s organizers. Mr. Biden beat Mr. Trump by about 150,000 votes in Michigan in 2020.

 

By early Wednesday, more than 95,000 voters had chosen “uncommitted,” with nearly 85 percent of the vote tallied — a figure that showed just how motivated left-leaning Michiganders were to register their disapproval toward Mr. Biden.

 

About 20,000 Democrats voted “uncommitted” in each of the last three Michigan Democratic presidential primaries.

 

Democrats will pay particular attention to the results in Ann Arbor, a college town where “uncommitted” was receiving nearly a third of the vote. While no battleground state has an Arab American community as large as Michigan’s, several have sizable numbers of student voters, from whom Mr. Biden will need strong turnout to win in November.

 

“I want to thank every Michigander who made their voice heard today,” Mr. Biden said in a statement that did not mention the “uncommitted” vote or the organized protest of his Gaza policy. “Exercising the right to vote and participating in our democracy is what makes America great.”

 

Organizers of the “uncommitted” effort were quick to claim victory, even if their overall share of the vote, 14 percent as of early Wednesday, did not represent an overwhelming symbolic triumph against Mr. Biden, who had 80 percent of the vote.

 

Layla Elabed — the campaign manager for Listen to Michigan, the group behind the protest vote — told supporters at a primary night watch party that they had sent a clear message to Mr. Biden that “Palestinian life is valuable and we demand a permanent cease-fire now.”

 

The movement aimed to warn Mr. Biden that he must change his stance on Gaza or face repercussions in November. The threat was most urgent in Michigan, which was vital to Mr. Biden’s 2020 victory and has lately tilted toward Mr. Trump in polls, but risked reverberating across the country.

 

Michigan — thanks to its large Arab American population, college campuses and early primary date — became the electoral focal point of wider Democratic unease with Mr. Biden’s support for Israel’s offensive in Gaza, which local health authorities say has killed over 29,000 Palestinians. Some of his allies feared that if the movement registered serious disapproval against him, it could have lasting effects into the general election, especially if Mr. Biden held firm to his position on the conflict.

 

“It’s not just the Arab American and Muslim community,” Representative Debbie Dingell of Michigan, a Democrat whose district includes Ann Arbor, said on CNN on Tuesday night. “It’s young people who want to be heard and have the same concerns.”

 

The strength of the “uncommitted” campaign, she said, is “not a surprise to me.”

 

The campaign drew endorsements from some prominent Michigan Democrats, including Representative Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, who is also Ms. Elabed’s sister. Our Revolution, the progressive group formed by supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont — who disavowed the effort himself — led a phone-banking push. Listen to Michigan held rallies and visited mosques across the state. Other grass-roots organizations on the left urged voters to choose “uncommitted,” as well.

 

Now Mr. Biden must figure out how to persuade some of his core constituents to come back to the fold. Michigan is a top battleground target both for Mr. Biden and his likely rival, Mr. Trump.

 

Mr. Trump, for his part, kept moving toward the Republican nomination with his defeat of Ms. Haley. But he is expected to pick up far more delegates on Saturday, when rival factions of Republicans are set to hold dueling conventions after a monthslong leadership fight that has thrown the state party into chaos.

 

That could mean the state will send two slates of delegates to the national convention this summer. Both sides are loyal to Mr. Trump, and the R.N.C. has recognized one faction, led by Pete Hoekstra, as legitimate.

 

Mr. Trump and his allies have sought to turn squarely to the general election. Pushing Ms. Haley to drop out, they have argued that she is forcing him to spend money that would be better used against Mr. Biden. Bolstered by campaign cash from wealthy donors, she has said she will keep competing through the Super Tuesday primaries on March 5.

 

For Mr. Biden, the “uncommitted” movement was his biggest test so far in a primary season he has dominated as an incumbent, despite a long-shot challenge from Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who was set to finish well behind the protest effort.

 

Even as Mr. Biden has stepped up pressure on Israel to wind down the war and expressed new hopes for a cease-fire, polls show that many Democrats disapprove of his handling of the conflict, and pro-Gaza protesters have shown up at his appearances around the country.

 

Samih Zreik, 80, cast a protest vote for “uncommitted” in Dearborn on Tuesday, at an elementary school where many signs were written in both English and Arabic and nearby houses were flying Lebanese, Yemeni and Palestinian flags alongside American ones.

 

Mr. Zreik said he had a message for President Biden: “Cease-fire, cease-fire, cease-fire.”

 

Without peace in Gaza, he said he would not vote for the president, even if that meant a victory for Mr. Trump, whom he abhors.

 

“America can do a cease-fire in minutes,” Mr. Zreik said.

 

But many other voters in Dearborn said Mr. Biden had lost their votes for good.

 

Ali Sobh, a 22-year-old real estate agent who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020, said he would probably support a third-party candidate like Jill Stein of the Green Party in a general election, saying of Mr. Biden: “The blood is already on his hands.”

 

“The Republicans have shown us how bad they are,” Mr. Sobh said. “And the Democrats have shown us how bad they are.”

 

Mr. Biden did not campaign in Michigan in the three weeks leading up to the primary, and few other top Democrats from outside the state traveled to stump on his behalf. When Vice President Kamala Harris held an event in Grand Rapids last week, it was closed to the public.

 

Mr. Biden’s supporters seemed to realize the protest movement could damage his re-election bid. Days before the Michigan primary, a pro-Israel group, Democratic Majority for Israel, began airing a digital ad warning that a vote for “uncommitted” would aid Mr. Trump. It was the first paid effort to lift Mr. Biden’s standing in the state.

 

On Monday, Representative Ro Khanna of California, a top Biden surrogate who has become an unofficial mediator on Gaza between progressive activists and Biden allies, warned that the president would lose Michigan in November if he maintained his “status quo policy.”

 

The results on Tuesday are not likely to approach the recent high-water mark for “uncommitted” in Michigan. In 2008, when Barack Obama and John Edwards were not on the ballot against Mrs. Clinton, their campaigns encouraged supporters to vote “uncommitted,” which received 40 percent of the primary vote — about 238,000 votes in that contest.