Minnesota made national waves in the Democratic Party presidential primary Tuesday as voters rejected President Joe Biden at the highest rate of any state so far this election year.
Nearly 46,000 of the state’s Democratic voters marked “uncommitted” on their ballots instead of Biden, making up 19 percent of all Democrats who turned out at the polls Tuesday. The strong turnout shocked political analysts, and organizers who urged Democrats to reject the president because of his handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
It also raised questions about whether the ripple effect could hand Republicans an advantage in the presidential election and state legislative races this fall.
“I was completely flabbergasted and elated by the results,” said Hassan Abdel Salam, a Minnesota member of the Abandon Biden national coalition. “It was 10 times the number that I felt was significant to redeem the strategy that we began in October.”
The push for uncommitted votes in the Democratic primary is a national campaign, with a number of Minnesotans getting involved beyond state borders. Michigan had the second highest percentage of uncommitted Democratic voters in the country, with just over 13%. North Carolina was third with just under 13%, and Massachusetts came in fourth with 9%.
Salam believes the results could make Minnesota a swing state in the November 5 general election.
Asma Mohammed, the lead organizer of Uncommitted Minnesota, which also pushed for Democratic voters to reject Biden, shared in Salam’s surprise. Uncommitted Minnesota and Abandon Biden are separate campaigns that urged Minnesotans to vote uncommitted, but have different strategies for the November 5 general election.
“I didn't expect it, but I'm really proud of the work that we did to show Palestinians that we have not forgotten them and that we will not stop until we have a ceasefire,” Mohammed said.
The Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party stayed largely silent about Tuesday’s uncommitted votes, instead emphasizing that Biden won 70%, or 171,260, of Minnesota’s Democratic primary voters.
Uncommitted votes finished second behind the president, with Minnesota Representative Dean Phillips coming in at a distant third with about 8% of the votes.
Biden has won every state primary so far, and is easily on his way to lock up his party’s presidential nomination. Former President Donald Trump has led the Republican primary, and is presumed to be his party’s nominee after challenger Nikki Haley dropped out of the race Wednesday morning.
“President Biden’s overwhelming victories in Minnesota and across the country show that our party is uniting to defend our democracy from Donald Trump,” DFL Chair Ken Martin said in a prepared statement. “The DFL will leave nothing on the table to keep Minnesota blue in this existential election.”
Martin added that uncommitted voters "wanted their voices to be heard, and participating in our presidential primary is the right way to do that."
"That message is being recognized, and President Biden is working to end the brutality in Gaza," Martin said. "We think the vast majority of these voters will understand the existential threat that Donald Trump poses to our democracy and will help us prevent him from returning to the White House. We will not take our base for granted in this election and we’ll work hard to earn every vote.”
‘People showed that they are really serious’
The strength of the uncommitted vote also shocked political pundits and analysts in the state, who say the result has implications for the general election.
Former state Senator Jeff Hayden, a Democrat who used to represent part of south Minneapolis, noted that uncommitted votes outnumbered Biden votes in his old district. The district, which is reliably progressive, is an important vote for Democrats in any statewide election, Hayden said.
“Yesterday, people showed that they are really serious about getting his attention,” Hayden said.
Hayden, who voted for Biden in the primary, said he understands why voters chose uncommitted, and emphasized that they are sending a loud message to the president.
Uncommitted Minnesota hoped the uncommitted votes would convince the president to call for a permanent ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.
Biden’s reelection chances hinge on support of the progressive base that voted uncommitted, Hayden said, and to do so he must start using the U.S. government’s power “to de-escalate what is going on in Israel.” That would include a ceasefire and sending humanitarian aid to Gaza, he said.
Hayden said he is concerned about the violence in the Middle East, but is also “terrified” of a second Trump administration, which he said could turn into a “revenge term” to get back at people opposed to him, including those who prosecuted and indicted him.
Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, called the amount of uncommitted votes “stunning,” especially for an effort that mobilized quickly.
“Whether it's a candidate or an issue, these things usually have weeks and hundreds of thousands of dollars behind them, and this had neither, and it had the largest support in the country so far by some margin,” he said.
Jacobs said that 19% of votes going toward uncommitted in Minnesota sends a big message to Biden, and he expects that Biden will have to make changes to his policies concerning Israel’s war in Gaza.
“He runs a risk of not winning if he continues in the current path,” Jacobs said.
If fewer Democrats vote in the November election because they don’t support Biden, Jacobs said, that could mean that some House seats in the Minnesota Legislature could flip, particularly in suburban areas. Democrats currently control the governor's office, the House of Representatives, and the Senate, which has allowed the Legislature to pass significant progressive reforms.
“That will come to a screeching halt if the Republicans win the majority in the House,” Jacobs said. “And if this uncommitted vote turns out to be a sign of a voter boycott in the November election, it’s going to be harder for the DFL to hold the majority in the House.”
The uncommitted votes also signal to the DFL that Muslim voters in the state can’t be ignored, he added. The local effort was led by high-profile leaders, including Minneapolis City Council Vice President Aisha Chughtai, St. Paul City Council President Mitra Jalai, and Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“They need to pay more attention to Muslim voters. We can't take them for granted, that they’re a political force, that they are well organized, that there's strong turnout for issues and candidates,” Jacobs said. “This was a major event, and I think it will be registered in the political lexicon as a kind of a marker.”
In Minneapolis, Wards 9 and 10 had the highest percentages of uncommitted votes, with about 55% and 56%, respectively. Those wards include the Corcoran, Powderhorn Park, Whittier, and Lowry Hill East neighborhoods, among others. Ward 13 around Lake Harriet and the southern tip of Bde Maka Ska in southwest Minneapolis had the lowest percentage of uncommitted votes in the city, with nearly 19%.
In St. Paul, the highest concentration of uncommitted votes were in Wards 1 and 4, which include the Hamline-Midway, Frogtown, and Summit-University neighborhoods, among others. About 34% of Democratic voters in each ward were uncommitted. Ward 3, which encompasses the Highland Park neighborhood, had the lowest percentage of uncommitted votes in St. Paul, with about 22%.
Hennepin County led the state with about 25% of voters checking uncommitted on their ballots. Ramsey County followed at 23%, with Rice County coming in third at 22%. Outstate counties where uncommitted votes gained traction included Olmsted County and St. Louis County at 16% and 15%, respectively.
Tuesday’s primary saw a lower overall turnout for Democratic voters compared to Republicans. Jacobs said that is likely because there wasn’t competition on the Democratic ballot.
“There was really no race here, which makes the uncommitted vote even more impressive,” Jacobs said. “These are not casual voters. It's the people who were highly motivated.”
The results mean that the uncommitted vote won 11 of 97 delegates who will attend the Democratic Party national convention later this year. Party delegates ultimately decide who becomes the party’s nominee for president, and the vast majority are pledged to Biden.
The uncommitted effort grew out of disapproval of Biden’s support and taxpayer-funding of the Israel-Hamas war. More than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed since the conflict started last October, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Organizers behind the local effort said two key groups drove the uncommitted turnout in Minnesota: Muslims and progressives, especially those from Generation Z.
“This is not a Muslim issue,” said Mohammed, the organizer with Uncommitted Minnesota. “This is an issue that spans across faiths, across generations, across races.”
Salam, who is also an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, said it stood out that more uncommitted voters turned out proportionally in Minnesotan than in Michigan’s primary last week.
Michigan’s uncommitted push, which Salam was a part of, took weeks of organizing and triple the effort, he said, while most of the Minnesota organizing happened within the last week. In the end, 13% of Democratic primary voters in Michigan marked uncommitted compared to Minnesota’s 19%, though the number of Michigan’s uncommitted voters exceeded 100,000 people. Many more people voted overall in Michigan.
“I thought it would be exceptional if we matched Michigan, and we really outdid them,” Salam said. “It was a thrilling night.”
Mohammed said that in the past week, the uncommitted campaign made thousands of calls and knocked on doors in areas with Muslim voters and in areas with many non-English speakers. The campaign in Minnesota is in touch with other states, and is helping to push their message nationally, she said.
Different strategies ahead
On primary day, several uncommitted Democratic voters said they had varying plans for this fall’s general election.
The Abandon Biden effort will push for a Biden defeat in November, Salam said, even if that helps Trump win. Uncommitted Minnesota, however, wouldn’t go that far, saying instead that its focus is on pushing Biden to declare a permanent ceasefire, and on using its delegates to influence policy at the Democratic National Convention this summer.
“We are going to make sure that our delegates are on message and that we are talking about the genocide of Palestinians and how the U.S. and President Biden had a significant part in that,” Mohammed said. “I think that our role will be ensuring that President Biden is a better nominee, and that we put our best foot forward in November.”
Biden is winning primaries across the country, Salam said, which means that his pledged delegates will vastly outnumber the influence of any uncommitted delegates.
“The only thing that stops him from becoming the nominee is himself,” Salam said. “He has no reason to step down if he’s looking at these numbers. Our number of delegates will be miniscule.”
Mohammed, on the other hand, said that if the effort succeeds in getting Biden to call for a permanent ceasefire, “that would be incredible.”
“We will still keep pressure on him to remove weapons from Israel. But immediate ceasefire is our biggest goal,” she said. “And until that happens, we will continue the pressure nationally to make sure that he knows that his presidency is at stake."
For Salam, a Biden call for ceasefire would be too little, too late to earn his support or change the course of the Abandon Biden campaign. He emphasized that he was part of a coalition of activists who gave Biden a November 1, 2023, deadline to declare a ceasefire to keep their support.
“We made a vow and we will keep our word,” Salam said. “I recall one of our co-chairs in Michigan saying, ‘I will vote for Biden in November if he declares a ceasefire as long as he revives and resurrects every lost life.’”
As for whether the overall effort leads to a Trump presidency again, Salam said the effort is worth the risk, even if he finds Trump “detestable.” He hopes that in the long run, a defeat for Biden would lead the way to “a new Democratic Party where it’s understood that there’s a red line, like the way that Republicans think of abortion.”
Mohammed said Biden needs to act soon to ensure reelection.
“If the president has not called for a ceasefire by November, I think that he will have lost a significant part of the party,” she said.
