The Legacy of the Uncommitted Campaigns in the MI Democratic Primary

Disagreement over foreign policy towards Israel has been growing in the Democratic base for around a decade now, driven primarily by generational differences in views on Israel and Palestine.

With the eruption of the War in Gaza on October 7, 2023, these divergent views in the party took on a new level of significance. Democratic President Joe Biden’s persistent support for military aid to Israel during its campaign in the Gaza strip found him increasingly at odds with a large percentage of the Democratic base who favored a ceasefire. 

As the Democratic primaries approached in the spring of 2024, with Biden facing little competition for a second nomination as the Democratic candidate, some organizers hoped to make their opposition to Biden’s Gaza approach more clear while underlining the potential electoral risk—and the uncommitted movement was born.

Last week at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, while Democrats by and large unified around Vice President Kamala Harris as the party’s new nominee, some pro-Palestine advocates protested outside the convention center. Inside the convention center, delegates with the uncommitted movement hoped to both offer their support for Harris and call for a ceasefire. 

Examining Michigan

This spring, some speculated that opposition to Biden’s foreign policy could pose an electoral risk in November 2024. One swing state which Biden won in 2020 was thought to be uniquely at risk: Michigan, which has the highest percentage of Arab Americans in the country, and the highest percentage of Muslim Americans among swing states. 

They looked to a previously little-noted option of “uncommitted” which has always been offered in the Michigan Democratic primaries. Whereas uncommitted in other primaries has largely signaled that a voter has not decided on a favored Democratic candidate, in the 2024 primary these organizers intended to use the uncommitted vote as a signal of disapproval with Biden’s policy on the war in Gaza rather than being truly “uncommitted.” 

In the weeks leading up to the primary, two campaigns in Michigan began calling on voters to cast “uncommitted votes,” instead of backing Biden’s reelection effort, in an attempt to signal opposition to the president’s stance on the war.

The Listen to Michigan campaign, which was more closely affiliated with some of the left wing of the Democratic party and Arab local and national community groups, quickly garnered the support of a number of local Michigan elected officials and community leaders. The Abandon Biden campaign called on voters to not only vote uncommitted in the primaries but to commit to not voting for Biden in November; this effort was bolstered by Muslim American leaders in a number of swing states. 

In February, the uncommitted vote won over 100,000 votes in the Michigan Democratic primary and vote totals were especially high in areas like Dearborn with large Arab communities. It was a top story in media outlets for weeks leading up to and throughout the primaries. The votes amounted to 13.3% of the vote share, much higher than in the two previous contested primaries and still around 3 points higher than in President Obama’s previous reelection primary in 2012. 

To better understand the uncommitted vote phenomenon, we at Public Wise undertook a survey in April 2024 in Michigan, where we included questions on the uncommitted vote and the two affiliated campaigns, as well as other questions related to voting history and intentions, views on the War in Gaza, and Biden’s handling of it. 

Our survey was conducted with PSB insights, and included 1,769 registered voters in Michigan, with a 2.3% Margin of Error. We had sampling quotas for age, gender, race/ethnicity, income, education, and region. Additionally, and unlike a typical poll of this kind, we put special efforts into survey recruitment and sampling quotas for a few key populations in Michigan: Arab Americans (n=76), Muslim Americans (n=117), and Jewish Americans (n=121). The sample was weighted by age, region, and Arab, Muslim, and Jewish estimated proportions of registered voters. 

The following were our key findings related to the uncommitted campaigns. 

The Uncommitted Campaign communications reached a large percentage of Michigan voters 

Despite its short duration and ad hoc creation, we found the uncommitted campaign was largely successful in reaching a significant percentage of Michigan registered voters: 19% of registered voters said they had heard “a lot” about the campaign, 32% heard about it “some” and only 22% said they hadn’t heard about it at all. 

When we asked voters about what specific versions of the campaign they had heard of, we found that the “Listen to Michigan” and the “Abandon Biden” versions of the campaign reached voters at roughly the same rate:

The Uncommitted Campaign Turned Out Less Regular Voters

We found some evidence that the uncommitted campaign was successful in turning out voters who might be new voters or typically not the kinds of super committed voters we see turn out for smaller elections like primaries. 

In general, 86% of Michigan registered voters in our survey had voted in the 2020 election¹, but a lower proportion of “uncommitted” primary voters had voted in 2020, at 81%. For another point of comparison, when we looked at those who voted for Biden in the 2024 primary, 95% said they had voted in 2020. 

Considering the concentration of the vote in areas with large Arab and Muslim populations, the uncommitted campaign seems to have been successful in encouraging turnout in an emerging section of the Michigan electorate who do not fit the profile of a typical primary voter. 

We also found that when asked about their voting intentions for the November general election, these voters were more likely to be undecided about whether and who to vote for President. At of the time of the survey:

• Roughly half of uncommitted primary voters said they will definitely or probably vote for President in 2024 but haven’t decided for whom yet, in contrast to just 11% of Michigan Biden 2020 voters who said the same
• 6% said they are committed to sitting out the Presidential election, in contrast to 3% of Biden 2020 voters

Our results also did seem to suggest that a large percentage of uncommitted voters were voting primarily as a protest vote over Gaza, although this was not the exclusive motivation for Uncommitted voters: 

• 39% said they aren’t sure or don’t know how Biden is handling the War in Gaza
• 22% said they disapprove of Biden’s handling because he favors the Israelis too much
• 21% said they disapprove of Biden’s handling because they want the US out of the conflict
• 11% approve of Biden’s handling of the War in Gaza
• 7% disapprove of Biden’s handling because they think he favors the Palestinians too much

But we also found that even if many of these Uncommitted voters’ main disagreement is with Biden, it wasn’t clear that they would try split ticket voting or skipping the presidential election and voting Democratic downballot. 

• 86% will definitely/probably vote downballot 
• 5% will definitely NOT vote downballot (roughly the same percentage who will not vote Presidential) 

Personal Connections to the War in Gaza

We also asked respondents in our Michigan survey about whether they personally had been affected by Gaza or whether someone they know had been personally affected. 

While 1.5% of the general Michigan voter population in our survey said they were personally affected, 7% knew someone who had been personally affected. 

Unsurprisingly, these numbers were much higher among Arab and Muslim respondents in Michigan – 9% of Arab respondents and 8% of Muslim respondents were personally affected, and just short of half of both Arab and Muslim respondents knew someone else who had been personally affected. 

In our open-ended question about how they or someone they knew had been personally affected, a large percentage of those respondents indicated that someones’ relative or loved one had been killed or had lost their home. 

Footnotes

¹(Actual turnout of registered active voters in Michigan in 2020 was 78%)