Biden Wins Michigan Democratic Primary, With ‘Uncommitted’ in Second Place

DEARBORN, Mich.—President Biden won the Michigan primary Tuesday evening, but lost votes from some who are angry over his support of Israel’s military campaign against Hamas as he heads toward a re-election rematch against former President Donald Trump in November.

Democratic voters in heavily Arab-American suburbs of Detroit and elsewhere chose “uncommitted” on the ballot in protest of Biden’s foreign policy. With 50% of the ballots in, Biden has 375,280 votes, 80.8%, compared to 62,238 for uncommitted, 13.4%, according to the Associated Press, which called the race for Biden as the polls closed. In 2016, Trump won Michigan’s electoral votes by just shy of 11,000 votes more than Hillary Clinton. Biden won the state in 2020 by some 154,000 votes.

Michigan is home to the largest percentage of Arab-Americans in the U.S., many concentrated in Dearborn, represented in Congress by Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the lone Palestinian-American member of Congress. She and the city’s Arab-American mayor have backed the “uncommitted” protest.

Many voters and national activists said pro-Palestinian voices have largely been ignored by the Biden administration and they want to send a message that their votes matter. While a majority of Muslims and Arab-Americans have reliably voted for Democrats in recent elections, one of the messages behind voting uncommitted is to ensure that the Democratic Party no longer takes these votes for granted, organizers said.

Biden has stood behind Israel despite international concerns over the conditions in Gaza, where most of its 2.3 million people are displaced and without adequate access to medical care. Nearly 30,000 people have been killed amid Israel’s military offensive, according to Palestinian authorities, most of them women and children. The numbers don’t distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israel has said it would press ahead with its operation following the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas fighters that killed about 1,200 people.

Biden has called for a temporary cease-fire to free hostages still being held by Hamas and allow more aid to reach Gaza. In New York on Monday, the president said that he hoped a cease-fire could take effect by early next week. But many Arab-American and Muslim voters say his efforts to broker a humanitarian pause are too little, too late.

The backlash leaves in question how voters will behave in November, in what is expected to be a tight race in a key swing state. Most supporting the uncommitted effort say they don’t favor a return to the White House for former President Donald Trump, the current Republican front-runner who easily won the Republican primary Tuesday, but they are leaning toward voting third party or not voting at all because of their frustration with Biden.

Laila Elabed, 36, walked with her husband and children to vote uncommitted, across the street from their brick home festooned with Palestinian flags and yard signs calling for peace in Gaza. The owner of a Dearborn bridal shop, Elabed voted for Biden in 2020 and for Trump in 2016, believing he would be pro-business, she said. Now, she said, with family in the Middle East affected by the war, she will not vote for either.

“The important thing is to send a message to our government not to spend our money on war,” she said. “It’s my people that are being killed.”

Biden didn’t directly address the uncommitted vote in a statement following his victory and remained focused on drawing a contrast with Trump, whom he branded as a threat to democracy and basic freedoms.

“This fight for our freedoms, for working families, and for Democracy is going to take all of us coming together,” Biden said. “I know that we will.”

Listen to Michigan, one of the groups that organized the uncommitted effort, claimed victory for a stronger showing than anticipated. “Tens of thousands of Michigan Democrats, many of whom voted for Biden in 2020, are uncommitted to his re-election due to the war in Gaza,” the group wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Count us out, Joe.”

Democrat Jonathan Kinloch, a Wayne County commissioner whose district includes parts of Detroit, said he has been telling constituents who ask to “be responsible and vote Biden” after recent uncommitted movement mailers. Kinloch is angry and frustrated by a movement he thinks risks returning Trump to office, which he thinks would represent a threat to democracy.

“I understand the pain, but this is a prelude to upending the November election,” he said. “I never play games with my vote.”

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a key Biden ally, said she appreciated those who made their voices heard in Tuesday’s primary, but warned that the general election would offer “a stark choice” between Biden and Trump.

“In Michigan, it’s time to come together and go full steam ahead to November for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris,” Whitmer said in a statement. “And we will continue getting the word out every day about what’s at stake.”

Political analyst Adrian Hemond, chief executive of the consulting firm Grassroots Midwest, said the undecided movement caught people’s attention for a reason. “You have to pay attention,” Hemond said. “The margins were tight here in 2020 and the president doesn’t have many votes to lose.”

Michigan was instrumental to Biden’s 2020 victory over Trump, who in 2016 became the first Republican to carry the state since 1988. Biden flipped the state back into the Democratic column. Listen to Michigan, one of the groups at the center of the “uncommitted” campaign, has set a target of at least 10,000 votes—around Trump’s margin of victory in 2016—to demonstrate how Biden’s position on Israel could cost him in a close election.

Biden’s allies pointed out that uncommitted ballots accounted for just under 11% of the vote in Michigan when former President Barack Obama was up for re-election in 2012, and Obama nonetheless went on to win the state by nine points in the general election. But some Democrats have expressed concern that Biden’s handling of the war risks widening a broader lack of enthusiasm around his candidacy.

Olivia Grantham, 23, came out with her two sisters and father, a Republican, to cast protest votes against the war and express their frustration with the presidential choices overall, she said. All voted uncommitted in the Democratic primary and said they don’t know what they will do in November, though they consider Trump a worse option than Biden.

Mohamed Saaidi, a 35-year-old owner of a trucking company, said frustration with the Biden administration over war and the economy led him to cast his first vote as a Republican—for Trump, whom he expects to support again in November. “I’m done with the Democrats,” he said.

Dearborn retiree Kris Levesque cast a vote for Biden, believing he has the best chance to beat Trump in the fall while her husband, Larry Levesque, voted uncommitted because he did not like his options, they said. Both said they wanted Biden to prevail in November. “I hope it strengthens him,” Mr. Levesque said of the pressure from the uncommitted campaign.

Tensions flared between Biden’s team and Michigan’s Arab-American community last month, when Biden campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez traveled to the state but was rebuffed by several local leaders, including the Dearborn mayor. The Biden administration subsequently dispatched some of its top foreign-policy officials to the state in a bid to quell the outrage. In meetings with elected officials and community leaders, top Biden aides privately acknowledged missteps in the administration’s response to the war and rhetoric around Palestinians.

But any outreach has thus far proven insufficient. Organizers behind the “uncommitted” effort say they are unlikely to cast their ballot for Biden in November barring a significant change in policy. Among their top demands are that Biden call for a permanent cease-fire and end U.S. military funding to Israel—both of which have been rejected by the White House.

The White House has said that a permanent cease-fire would help Hamas remain in power. Biden issued a directive this month attaching human-rights conditions to U.S. military aid more broadly—aimed in part at appeasing congressional Democrats who have called for conditioning military aid to Israel—but the president has long underscored the importance of the U.S.-Israel partnership and the need for continued U.S. funding.

Wayne County Commissioner Sam Baydoun, whose district includes Dearborn, said he and his constituents feel abandoned by Biden and need to see him call for a cease-fire.

Baydoun said it was too soon to know what he and others might do in November, but he rejected the message from some fellow Democrats against the uncommitted effort. “They keep threatening us that if you don’t vote for the president, you’re going to hand over the election to Trump,” he said. “You know what? It’s not on us, it’s on the candidate.”

Toula Vlahou contributed to this article.

Write to Elizabeth Findell at [email protected] and Sabrina Siddiqui at [email protected]