Biden wins the Michigan Democratic presidential primary as protest vote picks off two delegates

President Joe Biden easily won Michigan’s Democratic primary Tuesday, NBC News projects, in a contest whose only real drama came from a grassroots effort to cast protest votes over his handling of the war in Gaza.

A Michigan ballot line for “uncommitted” used to register a protest vote against Biden for his handling of the Israel-Gaza war won two delegates to the Democratic National Convention, NBC News projects. Biden will have the remaining 115 ballots bound to support him.

View the results here.

A Biden victory over his main rival, Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., was never in doubt in the contest, so the only real drama came from a grassroots effort to protest Biden’s support of Israel by encouraging Michigan Democrats to vote “uncommitted.”

With 95% of the expected vote in, the share of “uncommitted” votes Wednesday stood at 13%, second behind only Biden, who received 81%.

Self-help author Marianne Williamson finished third with 3%, even though she had suspended her campaign. The result caused her to “un-suspend” her campaign Wednesday. Phillips finished fourth with 2.7%.

The contest, the first since Michigan moved up its primary under a new Biden-backed calendar that dethroned Iowa and New Hampshire, carries extra significance since the state will be a ​​critical battleground in the November general election when Biden is likely to once again face former President Donald Trump.

The results are being heavily spun by both proponents and detractors of Biden inside the Democratic Party, but they may be most accurately read as a disappointment for both sides.

On one hand, the results show that nearly one-in-five Democrats in the key swing state — a little more than 100,000 voters — are not excited about Biden and chose another candidate or “uncommitted” instead. Biden beat Trump in 2020 by only 154,000 votes in Michigan, so he has little margin for error.

Now, the “uncommitted” movement will have a chance to send at least two official delegates to the national convention in Chicago in August.

On the other hand, the turnout for “uncommitted” was not far off the norm, despite a real organized effort.

When Barack Obama ran for re-election in 2012, the “uncommitted” share in Michigan’s Democratic primary was 11%. And Biden could afford to lose 100,000 votes from his 2020 performance and still beat Trump in the state, just by a narrower margin. Trump won Michigan by fewer than 11,000 votes in 2016, for instance.

Either way, the results may not paint a perfectly accurate picture of Michigan’s Democratic electorate, since it appears many Democrats decided to vote in the more competitive Republican Primary instead.

Still, there is no doubt that a minority of the Democratic Party is deeply upset with Biden over his handling of the war in Gaza, particularly Arab, Muslim and young voters. The only question is how big is that minority. And Michigan will continue to be at the forefront of the Biden campaign’s efforts to win those voters back, given its large Muslim population and must-win status for the campaign.

What made the “uncommitted” movement in 2024 unusual was the buy-in from prominent activists and even Democratic elected officials.

Among those voting “uncommitted” was Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., who is Palestinian American.

“President Biden is not hearing us,” Tlaib said in a video posted on X.

In Dearborn, home to one of the nation’s largest Muslim and Arab communities, the city’s Democratic mayor and other political leaders encouraged voting “uncommitted.” Early results for the city show 56% of participants in the Democratic primary voted “uncommitted,” while just 40% chose Biden.

"We have done our part in demonstrating that this is a core issue that Michigan voters care about and will bring forward to the ballot box in November. It is incumbent upon [Biden] at this point in time to determine the pathway that he wants to take,” Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud said at a Wednesday press conference for the "Listen to Michigan" campaign.

Listen to Michigan campaign manager Layla Elabed, Tlaib's sister, also suggested that the “threat” of another Trump presidency doesn’t automatically mean Biden should earn all progressive votes.

“An out-of-touch tactic, a fearmongering tactic, the threat of another Trump presidency is an ugly and incompetent way to win a presidency,” Elabed said

There is not much time for Biden to reunify a party that has splintered over the war, some Democrats said.

Even if Biden were to bring about a cease-fire in Gaza, there would still need to be a “healing” period before Democrats were again comfortable with his leadership, said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., a progressive who met with students and Arab leaders in Michigan last week.

“There needs to be an urgent course correction, and by that I don’t mean months,” Khanna said in an interview. “I mean weeks. And there will have to be thinking and strategy for how we win back this community.

Still, Biden has finished above 80% in all three official primaries that have taken place thus far. And he won 64% of the vote as a write-in candidate in New Hampshire’s unauthorized primary, where his name did not appear on the ballot due to a conflict between the state and the Democratic National Committee.

Phillips, a wealthy 55-year-0ld moderate who was not well known, entered the race on the theory that Democratic voters would prefer a generic younger Democrat over Biden.

So far, Phillips’ theory has failed to materialize.

He finished in the low single digits in South Carolina and Michigan, did not make the ballot in Nevada, and won less than 20% of the vote in New Hampshire, despite Biden ceding the state to him by refusing to compete in the unauthorized primary.

With Phillips failing to gain any momentum,, Biden’s attention is firmly directed at the general election and the looming rematch with Trump, who NBC News projected has won the Michigan GOP primary.

“This primary is uncompetitive, so people will use this time to speak their mind,” a Biden campaign aide said of the “uncommitted” vote, dismissing its significance as a harmless way for some to vent off anger.

Biden allies are expecting that many or most of the people who voted “uncommitted” in the primary will ultimately come around and vote for him over Trump in November.

Still, Biden invested in Michigan, unlike New Hampshire, and was not able to bring those dissidents back in the fold in time for the primary.

High-profile surrogates visited Michigan on Biden’s behalf before the primary, speaking to union, minority and suburban voters whose support is crucial to Biden. Looking to mobilize voters, they touted Biden’s record and warned of the consequences of a Trump sequel.

Vice President Kamala Harris went to Grand Rapids last week to discuss abortion rights, an issue that Democratic strategists believe will galvanize suburban women in the fall.

“The people of Michigan cannot sit back and take comfort without also understanding that elections matter and that there is a full-on, concerted effort to pass a national ban, which would mean the people of Michigan would not be safe,” Harris said.

Anger toward Biden is hard to miss.

At a Mexican restaurant in Lansing last week, the Ingham County Democratic Party met and passed a resolution calling for a cease-fire. The vote was unanimous, with Jewish members among those voting in favor.

Marshall Clabeaux, 30, sponsored the resolution. He is a loyal Democrat who estimates that he has knocked on more doors for Democratic candidates than anyone else in Michigan over the past decade. Now, he said, he is “broken” over the suffering and death in Gaza.

“If he [Biden] doesn’t change course, it’s very difficult for me to vote for him in November,” he said.

Equally hard to miss is Democratic animosity toward Trump.

As in Biden’s 2020 victory over Trump, one of the wellsprings of his support is voters’ distaste for the ex-president. Susan Titus, 79, a retired college professor who lives in Detroit, voted for Biden and said her anger toward Trump was a primary reason.

“I think he’s pretty much an a------, to coin a phrase,” she said of Trump. “And it’s terrifying to me, at 80, to think that he … could decimate social programs that I’ve been committed to and worked on for a very long time.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com