‘Uncommitted’ option push exceeds goal in Michigan Democratic primary : NPR

President Biden may have won Michigan’s Democratic primary, but for some voters who disapprove of his handling of Israel’s war in Gaza, Tuesday night was about sending a strong message: change course or lose votes in the election general.

As of 5 a.m. ET on Wednesday, more than 100,000 votes for the uncommitted option on the Democratic ballot have been counted, according to results reported by The Associated Press.

Biden maintains more than 80% of the total vote with almost 618,000 votes.

Listen to Michigan, a campaign started and headed led by predominantly young Arab and Muslim organizers, led a push for Democrats to vote uncommitted in the primaries as a protest vote.

They are urging Biden to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and to stop sending American aid to Israel. It comes nearly five months after Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people. Since then, almost 30,000 people have died in Gaza.

“We have led a movement that is far exceeding expectations, using the ballot box to urge America to stop killing our families,” Listen to Michigan spokesman and Democratic strategist Abbas Alawieh said at a watch party in Dearborn. , Michigan. “That’s all we do”. “We are asking. Just stop killing our families,” he added.

Dearborn has been at the center of this movement, where more than half of the population is of Middle Eastern or North African descent.

“This coalition wants to bring morality back to this country because somewhere along the way we lost it,” Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud said at the watch party Tuesday night.

“We will be that movement to bring [elected officials] back in line, if not with this primary election, then with November,” he added.

The campaign’s goal was to get more than 10,000 votes, roughly the margin by which former President Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016 when participation fell compared with the re-election of former President Barack Obama four years earlier.

A Biden campaign official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told NPR that while they will continue to work for every vote in November, they are encouraged that the share of “uncommitted” votes was not much higher than the 11% uncommitted votes. . in 2012, the last time a sitting Democratic president was on the ballot. That year there was no organized effort to get people to vote without commitment. The campaign also points out the significant number of people who came out to vote for the president, some 600,000, despite the primaries being largely uncontested. That participation is much better than that of 2012.

In previous presidential primaries, the uncommitted option in Michigan garnered thousands of votes. For comparison, in 2012, more than 20,000 people chose to vote without pledging in Michigan. The number this time is about 101,000.

Further, in 2008More than 238,000 voted uncommitted as part of a movement to support Obama’s candidacy, which was not on the state primary ballot.

Notably, Biden won Michigan in 2020 by more than 150,000 votes. But organizers behind the Listen to Michigan campaign say the anger and hurt caused by the U.S. stance on the war in Gaza will pose serious problems for Democrats if they don’t change course.

In 2020, there were more than 200,000 registered voters in Michigan. who identified as Muslimand more than 300,000 Michiganders identify as Middle Eastern or North African, according to data from the US Census

Furthermore, opposition to Biden’s handling of Gaza may be spreading beyond Arab and Muslim voters. in a New York Times/Siena Poll Posted in December, Biden received notably high disapproval for his handling of the issue from voters under 30.

Young voters can play a crucial role in the 2024 elections. In the 2022 midterms, Michigan had the highest turnout of any state among voters under 30, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University.

The Michigan primary comes to a close just a day after Biden announced that a temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hamas could occur as early as Monday.

“Our hope is that a long-awaited ceasefire agreement will be reached as soon as humanly possible,” Listen to Michigan spokesperson Alawieh said in a statement to NPR Monday night. But he stressed that the goal of the campaign remains for the president to publicly call for a permanent ceasefire.

For other organizers behind the campaign, Tuesday was not about election results.

“That’s the really important headline here,” spokesman Lexis Zeidan said before primary day. “There are people under this umbrella who are waiting [Biden] to change course. And there are people in November who have written it off, but still have faith in the Democratic Party. And I think that’s what’s really important.”

Back at the watch party in Dearborn, fans gathered excitedly to celebrate as the results came in.

State Rep. Abraham Aiyash, a strong supporter of the movement, is looking beyond primary day to the Democratic convention, noting it’s possible the “uncommitted” option could win at least one delegate.

The Democratic Party awards delegates if a candidate, in this case “uncommitted”, receives 15% of the total vote statewide and then 15% of the vote in any congressional district. The Associated Press had not assigned delegates to “uncommitted” as of 11:15 p.m. ET.

But Aiyash and others are not deterred.

“By the way, we’re going to Chicago, in 174 days we’ll be at the Democratic National Convention, galvanizing and growing this anti-war movement,” Aiyash predicted.

“Maybe they’ll listen to Michigan,” he hoped.