MINNEAPOLIS — Approximately 45,000 Minnesota Democrats voted for “uncommitted” instead of incumbent President Joe Biden during the presidential primary, according to unofficial results of nearly all precincts Tuesday night — an effort to protest the Israel-Hamas war and put political pressure on the White House to call for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza.
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That support amounted to approximately one in every five Democratic Party votes Tuesday night, and significantly surpassed the 7.8% of Democrats who cast ballots for Minnesota’s own U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips, who launched a longshot campaign against Biden.
On Wednesday morning, the Minnesota DFL affirmed that 64 of the 75 delegates will be assigned to Biden, but 11 of them will be going to “uncommitted.” Still, the party stressed unity.
“I want to thank every candidate that put their name forward and participated in our presidential primary,” DFL Chairman Ken Martin said. “President Biden’s overwhelming victories in Minnesota and across the country show that our party is uniting to defend our democracy from Donald Trump. The DFL will leave nothing on the table to keep Minnesota blue in this existential election.”
No delegates will go to Phillips.
Minnesota organizers pushing the “uncommitted” movement said turnout exceeded expectations and claimed victory in achieving their goal: to send the Biden administration a message that voters are unhappy with his position on the war.
“We’re doing this so President Biden knows that Democrats have had enough of this endless support for a genocidal regime,” Asma Mohammed, a lead organizer for Uncommitted Minnesota. “Today we are showing him that Minnesota is on the side of justice and humanity.”
In 2020, Uncommitted received about 2,600 votes. The group didn’t set a threshold they sought to clear before going into Super Tuesday, but celebrated the turnout that will likely yield delegates for the national convention in August.
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Mohammed and other activists called and door-knocked to reach thousands of voters over the weekend, encouraging them to support the movement. It follows a similar effort in Michigan, where 100,000 voters checked the box for uncommitted in the Democratic presidential primary there. Other states also had this choice on their ballots Tuesday.
“I want to send President Joe Biden a very strong message that the way he’s handling this is atrocious,” said Uncommitted voter Bethany Waldron. “He needs to listen to his constituents and the American people. We don’t want to see a genocide happening.”
