WASHINGTON – The primaries may not be a predictor of what is to come in November, but if Tuesday’s contests revealed anything, it’s that President Biden and former President Trump may find more opposition from within their own parties than outside of them, experts said Wednesday during a Brookings Institution panel.
Super Tuesday’s results all but confirmed Biden and Trump had secured their parties’ nominations, but the showing of “uncommitted” votes against the president and support for Nikki Haley amongst more moderate Republicans revealed a chink in both candidates’ armor.
The percentage of Democratic voters who chose “uncommitted” ranged from 4% to 19% across the 15 contests held on Super Tuesday.
“We did see, unfortunately for the Biden administration, meaningful numbers of voters choose to take this route,” Gabriel Sanchez, senior fellow of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, said about the prevalence of the “uncommitted” vote count. “In some of these states where the vote margin back in 2020 were in range of these voters having an impact, it’s definitely a concern for them.”
Opponents of the president’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war organized around the “uncommitted” vote across seven of the fifteen Super Tuesday states and territories. None of the states had as strong a protest vote as the 100,000 cast during Michigan’s Democratic primary last week. In Minnesota, according to a New York Times exit poll, the “uncommitted” vote received almost 46,000 votes. Biden won the state with nearly 71% of the vote, but Minnesota will send 11 of its 75 delegates as “uncommitted” to the Democratic National Convention.
“At least in terms of the on-the-ground effort and what we saw from the numbers, it’s the closest we saw of Super Tuesday states to what we saw in Michigan,” Sanchez said.
The “uncommitted” vote performed the best in Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, the state’s capital and most populous city. Exit polls found that the protest vote was cast by a coalition of Muslim Americans and young progressive voters, “which is obviously key for the Biden administration,” said Sanchez.
On the Republican side, Nikki Haley suspended her campaign Wednesday morning after a weak primary showing. Having only won Washington, D.C. leading up to Super Tuesday, Haley’s campaign held its breath heading into the first big delegate day of the year. They came up short, adding only Vermont to the list of primary wins.
Throughout the primaries, and again on Super Tuesday, Haley performed well in places that tend to be heavily Democratic during the general election, Kyle Kondik wrote in Sabato’s Crystal Ball’s post-Super Tuesday analysis. In addition to Vermont, the former UN ambassador found a lot of support in the Virginia suburbs outside of Washington and in college towns throughout the state like Charlottesville.
Bill Kristol, editor at large of The Bulwark, complemented Haley on her race against Trump. “I think the Haley numbers are a little bigger than they look,” he said. “Haley got 25% of the vote – roughly – in all the Republican primaries and that means there’s a quarter of the Republicans who are anti-Trump.”
With Haley out of the race, both Biden and Trump have made appeals to her base. Biden praised Haley’s efforts and said in a statement Wednesday morning, “Donald Trump made it clear he doesn’t want Nikki Haley’s supporters. I want to be clear: There is a place for them in my campaign.”
Trump recruited Haley’s supporters to his campaign via TruthSocial where he reflected on Tuesday’s results writing, “Nikki Haley got TROUNCED last night.” He went on to invite her supporters “to join the greatest movement in the history of our Nation.”
Both Haley supporters and “uncommitted” voters were in powerful positions to potentially swing the election outcome, but Kristol said that the “uncommitted” vote was the vote to watch.
“The ‘uncommitted’ vote could be the Jill Stein vote of 2024,” Kristol said, referring to the Green Party candidate who helped Trump seize the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton.
Super Tuesday’s results launched the American public into a likely Biden-Trump rematch in which both campaigns may be at the mercy of voters in their own parties whose support used to be guaranteed.