81% of the votes for the presidential primary in Michigan were won by President Joe Biden. The result exceeded 13% of the expected result, as most of the citizens were against him due to his take on the Israel-Gaza conflict, in which he was supporting Israel. Joe Biden was continuously criticized by US citizens.
Voters were not happy with the position of the USA on the Israel-Hamas issue. The protest was considered a victory by the group members of Listen to Michigan, as more than 100,000 people participated in it. The activists in the group and the voters pressured the Biden administration to stop supporting Israel and ask the Israeli government for a ceasefire.
The mayor of Dearborn, a Detroit suburb with a lot of Arab-American residents-Abdullah Hammoud, said, “What is clear is that our president has a choice before him. It is my hope, Mr. President, that you listen to us, that you choose the people of America over Benjamin Netanyahu.”
At the watch party organized by the organization, the audience was seen to be in tears when they saw the tower being updated. The US is a very close supporter of Israel, which provides military aid worth billions of dollars to the latter. In support of Israel, the US has already vetoed a resolution presented by the United Nations regarding the ceasefire in Palestine, and the US has presented a new idea for a temporary ceasefire during Ramadan.
One of the uncommitted voters, a political analyst from the University of Virginia, Larry Sabato, said, “I think he should be cognizant of it as he moves forward with his Middle East policy. Because the truth is, he’s losing a lot of votes, not just Arab Americans and Muslim Americans, but young people.”
Michigan has selected the winning president in the last two elections, but now Mr. Biden is losing support in the region due to his support for Israel.
Israel-Gaza was started on October 7, 2023. In the war, 1,200 people from Israel were killed, and nearly 250 people were taken as hostages by Hamas. Since then, Israel has started targeting Palestinians by launching a massive military operation against them. In this operation, more than 30,000 Palestinians have been martyred and 70,325 people have been injured, according to the Health Ministry of the Gaza Strip.
Due to this huge toll of deaths in the region, Israel has come under international pressure to end this game of blood and come to a ceasefire. The majority of Michiganders have, therefore, opted to cast their votes “uncomitted” to send a message of “no ceasefire, no vote” to the government.
One of the voters, 32-year-old Hala, confessed that she voted uncommitted because she “didn’t want to vote for genocide Joe.” She told her news channel that her vote was with Mr. Biden in the last election, but she is not planning to do that again in the next presidential election. She added, “Maybe, if he calls for an immediate ceasefire, he’s not going to do that.”
A few people belonging to the main community of the country also cast their protest vote as a consideration of the failure and guidance of the administration to resolve or try to settle down the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Other supporters of the Democratic Party told the media that they supported Mr. Biden during the pole. A church officer in Flint City, Kim Murdough, while comparing Trump and Biden, said, “I voted Democrat. I personally don’t have an issue with anything that the administration has done. I’d rather have someone in office that forgets a few things than a criminal.”
