Did Gaza protest vote make a mark on Illinois primary, impact support for Biden?

Amid a growing split in the Democratic Party over the war in Gaza, Palestinian and Muslim community leaders called on voters to protest President Joe Biden in the Illinois primary last week by writing in “Gaza” or leaving the presidential line blank.

So did that effort make a mark?

Illinois doesn’t make it easy to figure that out.

Local and state election authorities don’t track write-in votes for phrases or non-certified candidates, so there’s no telling how many write-ins with “Gaza” or other messages were submitted. And not all of them can be considered a protest against the president anyway — there are voters every election who write in things like “Mickey Mouse” or simply don’t pick a candidate.

The reason write-ins and blanks were the strategy to begin with was that Illinois doesn’t have an “uncommitted” option in its primaries. Protest votes were clearer in other states such as Michigan and Minnesota, where a total of more than 150,000 voters chose “uncommitted” over the president in their primaries.

So what's left is looking at the number of Democratic primary voters here who did not choose Biden.

Chicago and Cook County voters didn’t entirely reject the president — he still won 90% of Chicago votes cast in the Democratic presidential primary and 92% in suburban Cook County. He also won Illinois resoundingly and will almost certainly take the state in November.

But a closer look at the results raises questions about what appears to be a relatively small yet noticeable repudiation — one without comparison in at least 20 years — that points to discontent with the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee.

In all of Cook County, there have been 553,867 Democratic ballots cast and counted as of Tuesday evening. But 67,350 of those, or 12%, didn’t vote for a certified presidential candidate — that is, they either wrote in a phrase, “Gaza” being one possibility, or they left the presidential line blank. There were another 44,891 people who picked a different candidate, like Marianne Williamson or Dean Phillips.

So in the end, 112,241 Democrats who voted in Cook County didn’t pick Biden for president. That’s a little more than 20% of ballots that appear to ignore Biden. And it’s the most Cook County ballots — and the highest share of ballots — apparently spurning an incumbent Democratic candidate for president since Jimmy Carter 44 years ago.

That’s the best apples-to-apples look: Illinois primaries in which an incumbent Democrat president was running for reelection, when voters might assume a predetermined nominee. The points of comparison aren’t extensive — there’s Biden this year, Barack Obama in 2012, Bill Clinton in 1996 and Carter in 1980.

Obama, a homegrown president largely beloved at the time in Chicago, saw fewer than 9% of Cook County voters ignore him in 2012. Clinton had about 16% of ballots pick someone other than him or nobody at all. And Carter, in a contested election, faced a whopping 57% of voters who looked elsewhere, in a year in which his handling of the Iranian hostage crisis cast a shadow on his presidency.

The non-Biden vote is most stark in Chicago, where almost one in four voters didn’t choose the president last week.

A Biden campaign spokesperson said that the president "believes making your voice heard and participating in our democracy is fundamental to who we are as Americans.

"He shares the goal for an end to the violence and a just, lasting peace in the Middle East," the spokesperson continued. "He's working tirelessly to that end."

It’s impossible to attribute these results to any one particular cause. Some voters might leave the presidential line blank because they assume Biden will win.

Those who supported that Gaza protest celebrated the results as a message successfully sent to the White House.

"This is a warning to the Biden administration," said Bassem Kawar, a community organizer who helped lead the Gaza write-in campaign. "End the genocide, stop sending U.S. aid to Israel and this is how we’re going to react: Protest in the streets, protest at the polls."

It’s likely some stayed home instead of voting for Biden — there was a higher Democratic turnout in Cook County this year than in Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, but lower than Clinton and Carter. But Kawar said a phone and text message push helped get some people to the polls who otherwise weren’t planning to vote.

With "Gaza getting worse by the second," and the Democratic National Convention heading to Chicago this summer, Kawar said it was heartening to see people use their votes to share concerns.

"It’s not just the Palestine support and solidarity movement that’s not satisfied with Biden," Kawar said. "Many other movements are not satisfied, whether it be around immigration or other issues. And I think that needs to be taken into consideration, too."