President Joe Biden is projected to win Michigan's Democratic presidential primary comfortably, despite tens of thousands of protest votes against him.
Activists urged Democrats to vote “uncommitted” rather than cast a ballot for the president because of his stance towards Israel's war in Gaza. With 32% of the votes counted, more than 40,000 had chosen “uncommitted”.
Mr Biden had received 80% of the vote, according to BBC partner CBS News. In statement that did not reference the campaign against him, Mr Biden thanked “every Michigander who made their voice heard today”.
Mr Biden is largely unopposed in the Democratic Party's search for a nominee, meaning he is on course to face off in November's presidential election against Donald Trump – in a rematch of 2020. The former president is also projected to win Tuesday's Republican primary in Michigan.
In remarks given to a celebration event by his team, Mr Trump was quoted saying it had been a “great day” in Michigan. “[W]e're going to win big, and it's going to be like nothing that anybody has ever seen,” he added.
The numbers of “uncommitted” voters surpassed the expectations of some of the groups opposing 81-year-old Mr Biden.
Grassroots organisation Listen to Michigan, which was part of the campaign, also hailed the day as a win. People were in tears at a watch party hosted by the organisation as updated vote tallies were periodically announced.
Congressman Andy Levin who supported the “vote uncommitted”movement told the crowd: “I take no joy in being here tonight. This moment is a child of necessity because people are dying by the thousands.”
Michigan is one of a handful of major swing states that each party's nominee will battle for in 2024. Mr Trump won it in 2016, helping propel him to the presidency. But Mr Biden flipped it back in 2020, taking the state by around 150,000 votes.
Tuesday does not mark the first time a significant portion of Michiganders opted to cast votes as “uncommitted”. Around 19,000 residents did so in 2020's primary and more than 21,601 did so in 2016. In 2008 it was 238,000 – after Barack Obama's campaign encouraged them to do so, because he chose not to be on the ballot due to party squabbles.
But campaigners in Michigan have been organising for months to send Mr Biden a message of “no ceasefire, no vote” over the war in Gaza. Tuesday's primary was their first chance to send a statement.
The state has the largest proportion of Arab Americans in the country. Nationwide, 64% of Muslim voters backed Mr Biden in 2020, according to the AP News agency. Frustrated with Mr Biden's backing of Israel during the war, some of his supporters said they had changed their minds.
At Salina Intermediate School in Dearborn – across the railroad tracks from a sprawling Ford factory – the BBC spoke to Hala, 32, who said she voted “uncommitted”.
She did not “want to vote for Genocide Joe”, she explained – alluding to allegations made against the Israeli military during its campaign in Gaza, which Israel strongly denies. In her heavily Arab-American community, “vote here” signs were translated in Arabic, as well as the pamphlets volunteers handed out encouraging voters to “Abandon Biden”.
Hala – who declined to share her last name for privacy reasons – said she voted for Mr Biden last time, but was was not sure she would do so again when the presidential election came round. “Maybe, if he calls for an immediate ceasefire, but he's not going to do that,” she said.
Other Democrats remain supportive of Mr Biden, including Kim Murdough, an office manager at a church in the city of Flint.
“I voted Democrat. I personally don't have an issue with anything that the administration has done,” she said.
She added that concerns about Mr Biden's age – 81 – were not a deal-breaker for her. “I'd rather have someone in office that forgets a few things than a criminal,” she said, referencing Mr Trump, who faces federal and state criminal charges.
Margaret Won voted for Mr Biden, too. She is mostly happy with the work Mr Biden has done, though said he had been blocked in some of his aims by Republicans in Congress.
She said she wished the frontrunner presidential candidates were younger and said if Ms Haley beat Mr Trump to the Republican nomination, she might get her vote.
Like dozens of other states, Michigan has open primary elections – which means Democrats, Republicans and independents were all able to vote in Tuesday's contest, though they had to ask for a specific party's ballot when casting their vote.
Unlike Democrats, the state's Republican delegates will be formally awarded later at a state convention on 2 March. But in the wake of the war, the movement has gained endorsements from at least 39 state and local elected officials, including congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud.
“I was proud today to walk in and pull a Democratic ballot and vote uncommitted,” Ms Tlaib said in a video shared to social media. Her sister was the campaign manager for Listen to Michigan campaign, which aimed to score 10,000 “uncommitted” votes.
Samraa Luqman, an activist with the Abandon Biden campaign, said her goal was to “oust somebody from office for having this many lives lost without calling for a ceasefire”.
One woman told the BBC she had even changed parties over the Israel-Hamas conflict. “I always vote Democrat, but this year I voted Republican because of Palestine, because of the massacre of Palestine,” said the woman, who asked to remain anonymous.
Senator Gary Peters, from Michigan, told reporters at a meeting arranged by the Biden campaign on Monday that the president understood voters' concerns about Gaza. However, the White House has been reluctant to row back its support, sending billions of dollars in military aid to Israel and three times blocking a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire.
Instead the US has called for a pause in fighting and defended Israel's right to hunt down the Hamas gunmen who killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel on 7 October. Meanwhile, the death toll in Gaza is nearly 30,000 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-led health ministry.
Speaking earlier this week, Mr Biden said he hoped there would be a ceasefire by Monday – following reports of some progress in indirect negotiations involving Israeli and Hamas officials..
Michigan's presidential primary election also came after months of dysfunction among Michigan's Republican leaders. Earlier this year, the party voted to oust its chair, Trump supporter and election-denier Kristina Karamo, over party in-fighting and fundraising issues.
She had declined to step down from her post, arguing the vote to remove her was illegitimate. A Michigan judge found on Tuesday that she had been properly removed.
— CutC by bbc.com
