President Joe Biden has easily won Michigan’s Democratic primary, even after facing anti-Israel protest votes over his handling of the conflict in Gaza.
The AP called the race seconds after all polls in the state closed at 9pm ET, with the President receiving 78.5 percent of the vote with 12 percent of the vote in.
“Uncommitted” received 16.2 percent of the vote, followed by Dean Phillips with 2.7 percent and Marianne Williamson with 2.6 percent.
Biden confronted perhaps his most potent electoral obstacle yet on Tuesday – an energized movement of voters upset with his handling of the war in Gaza and his “overly supportive” relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
That dynamic was put to the test in Michigan, the last major primary state before Super Tuesday and a critical swing state in November’s general election.
Despite a dominant victory on Tuesday, Biden’s campaign will be looking at the margins for signs of weakness in a state that went for the president by just three percentage points last time.
READ MORE: Michigan Primaries 2024 – Biden braces for mass protest voter over Gaza stance
The “uncommitted” effort, which began in earnest just a few weeks ago, has been backed by officials such as Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the first Palestinian-American woman in Congress, and former Rep. Andy Levin, who lost a Democratic primary two years ago after pro-Israel groups spent more than $4 million to defeat him.
Abbas Alawieh, spokesperson for the Listen to Michigan campaign pushing voters to select “uncommitted,” said the effort is a “way for us to vote for a ceasefire, a way for us to vote for peace and a way for us to vote against war.”
Trump won Michigan by just 11,000 votes in 2016 over Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, and then lost the state four years later by nearly 154,000 votes to Biden. Alawieh said the “uncommitted” effort wants to show that they have at least the number of votes that were Trump’s margin of victory in 2016, to demonstrate how influential that bloc can be.
“The situation in Gaza is top of mind for a lot of people here,” Alawieh said. “President Biden is failing to provide voters for whom the war crimes that are being inflicted by our U.S. taxpayer dollars – he’s failing to provide them with something to vote for.”
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