President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump won their respective party primaries in Michigan on Tuesday.
Biden overcame an activist-led campaign to vote in protest of his response to Israel’s war with Hamas, which had about 13% of the vote shortly after midnight.
Biden is on track to win the Democratic nomination for a second term, while the former president is poised to win the Republican nomination for the third time in a row.
Trump’s victory dashes former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s hopes of gaining traction ahead of next week’s Super Tuesday elections when more than one-third of the party’s delegates are at risk.
While Biden easily won the Democratic primary, the outcome provided some warning signs for the president. He faced organised resistance from Arab and Muslim Americans, who were outraged by the administration’s conduct of Israel’s war in Gaza, and launched a campaign to persuade Democratic voters to vote “uncommitted.”
The “Listen to Michigan” campaign was endorsed by Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib and former Rep. Andy Levin, as well as progressive organisations like Our Revolution, which grew out of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign. (According to a spokeswoman, Sanders had no role in that decision and now supports Biden.)
Even while votes were still being tabulated on Tuesday night, the Michigan group’s organisers declared their campaign a success.
“We demand President Biden to take action now—bring a permanent ceasefire,” said Layla Elabed, the group’s campaign manager. “A vote uncommitted was a humanitarian vote.”
She stated that the operation was just getting started, with plans to maintain pressure on the president for the next eight months until the November election.
“I’d like to thank every Michigander who spoke out today. “Exercising the right to vote and participating in our democracy is what makes America great,” Biden stated in a statement on the primary results that targeted Trump while ignoring the uncommitted movement.
This year, the Michigan primary has been shifted closer to the front of the Democratic presidential nomination calendar. With Biden’s encouragement, party officials demoted Iowa and New Hampshire from their regular spots on the calendar in order to create a more varied slate of early-voting states, which typically grab attention and narrow the party’s field of contenders.
Michigan is also one of the most critical presidential swing states, having helped Trump win the White House in 2016 by over 11,000 votes. Four years later, Biden defeated Trump in Michigan by around 150,000 votes.
Activists wanted to send Biden a message about the political consequences of his support for Israel in a must-win state. Dearborn, in particular, has one of the largest Arab American populations in the United States.
According to Emgage, a group dedicated to increasing Muslim Americans’ political influence, almost 146,000 Muslim Americans voted in Michigan’s general election in 2020.
“This is not an anti-Biden campaign,” a Palestinian American named Elabed recently told CNN. “This is a humanitarian vote. This is a protest vote. It is a vote that shows Biden and his administration that we are committed to saving lives.
Meanwhile, Biden has demonstrated his political strength in Michigan, where Gretchen Whitmer, a Democratic governor who was on his 2020 vice presidential shortlist, easily won reelection in a 2022 contest that crucially relied on her support for abortion rights.
In September, the president joined the United Auto Workers union on a picket line in Michigan during a strike against major automakers. “You deserve what you’ve earned, and you’ve earned a hell of a lot more than you’re getting paid,” he stated at the time. The UAW endorsed Biden in January.
