Biden hit with protest vote from ‘uncommitted’ Democrats despite primary win

Washington: Joe Biden has won the Michigan Democratic primary race but faced a sizeable protest vote over his support for Israel, casting doubt about his ability to maintain the coalition he needs to fend off Donald Trump in critical swing states.

At the Michigan presidential primaries on Wednesday (AEDT), Biden was hit by a grassroots campaign to persuade Democrats and progressives to vote “uncommitted” in response to his stance over the war in Gaza.

President Joe Biden speaks to striking United Auto Workers on the picket line in Michigan last year. Credit: AP

In the end, he received about 81 per cent of the vote, but more than 100,000 people - over 13 per cent - took the uncommitted option.

For context, this far outweighed the 10,704 votes that allowed Trump to wrest the state from Hillary Clinton in 2016, and was more than the uncommitted votes that are usually lodged in a Michigan election, which hover around 20,000. Biden beat Trump by about 150,000 votes in Michigan in 2020.

The president’s longshot Democratic challenger, Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips, had 2.7 per cent of the primary vote.

Donald Trump, meanwhile, easily won the Republican primary race in the state, with more than double the number of votes than Nikki Haley, his last remaining challenger for the presidential nomination.

But Haley remained defiant, sharpening her attacks against the frontrunner and warning that selecting him as the Republican presidential candidate would be “like suicide for our country”.

Republican presidential candidate former US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley speaks with attendees at a campaign rally on Monday in Grand Rapids, Michigan.Credit: AP

She also vowed to stay in the race through to Super Tuesday next week, when 15 other states will hold their primary races and when the highest number of delegates – which are required for candidates to win the presidential nomination – are up for grabs.

“What I’m saying to my Republican Party family is we’re in a ship with a hole in it,” Haley told CNN after polls closed. “And we can either go down with the ship and watch the country go socialist left, or we can see that we need to take the life raft and move in a new direction.”

While Biden was always expected to win Michigan in a landslide without a serious rival, a high number of uncommitted votes is a warning sign for the president in the politically volatile blue-collar state.

Rashida Tlaib, centre, alongside fellow Democrats Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley.Credit: AP

An estimated 300,000 Arab-American and Muslim voters live in Michigan, while the fast-growing city of Dearborn – about 25 minutes from downtown Detroit – has the nation’s highest Muslim population per capita.

The state is also home to many union workers, young people, and black voters – all of whom make up the coalition Biden needs to win a potential rematch with Trump in November.

Many of those residents formed part of the grassroots campaign to send a message to Biden for his failure to support a ceasefire in Gaza by using the “uncommitted” option on the Michigan ballot paper. This allowed voters to exercise a party vote without selecting a candidate.

The movement gained endorsements from dozens of state and local officials. Among them was Democratic congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American elected to the US Congress, who also called for people to effectively vote against Biden in the contest.

“We must make sure that our government is about us, about the people,” Tlaib said in a social media video after voting “uncommitted”.

A volunteer holds a sign outside a polling station at Oakman School in Dearborn, Michigan.Credit: Bloomberg

“When 74 per cent of Democrats in Michigan support a ceasefire, yet president Biden is not hearing us, this is the way we can use our democracy to say: listen. Listen to Michigan.”

The White House, on the other hand, insists that it has been doing what it can to push for a ceasefire. On Monday, Biden said he believes an agreement to hold Israel’s military operations in Gaza could take place early next week, in exchange for some of the 100-plus hostages being held by Hamas.

Asked by a reporter during a campaign stop in New York when he expected a ceasefire to begin Biden replied: “I hope by the end of the weekend. My national security advisor tells me that we’re close. We’re close. We’re not done yet. My hope is by next Monday we’ll have a cease-fire.”

If a deal is brokered, it would be a crucial moment in the Middle East conflict, where the death toll in Gaza is set to pass 30,000 this week.

Appearing on Late night with Seth Meyers on Monday night, the president also revealed that there had been “an agreement by the Israelis that they would not engage in activities during Ramadan” - the Muslim holy month that starts in two weeks- to “give us time to get all the hostages out”.

However, Hamas later played down a deal, with the group’s representative in Lebanon, Ahmed Abdel Hadi, telling a local TV channel that the leaks were “psychological warfare” designed to pressure the Hamas leadership to wave its conditions for a ceasefire.

Among these conditions is a demand to end the fighting and withdrawal of all Israeli forces from Gaza – something that Israeli, Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu has previously described as “delusional.”

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.