DEARBORN – Dearborn and two other Michigan cities with large Arab and Muslim populations turned against President Biden in Michigan’s primary after Democratic leaders there warned for months that voters were angry about his handling of the Israeli war on Gaza.

While Biden won the state with a little over 623,415 votes, the results in Dearborn, Dearborn Heights and Hamtramck highlight the challenge his reelection campaign faces in a swing state that each major party has said they must win to take the White House in November. More than 101,436 Michigan Democratic primary voters cast ballots for “uncommitted” in the race, enough to pick up two delegates.

“In the city of Dearborn we have demonstrated that the issue of Gaza is not an issue that is only of concern to Arab Americans and Muslim Americans,” Dearborn’s mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, told a crowd Tuesday night as votes were announced. “But this is an issue to all Americans from coast to coast.”

“We will not vote for Biden if he stands on his head from now till November,” Osama Siblani, publisher of The Arab American News, told reporters interviewing him at the newspaper’s headquarters in Dearborn. “He is a partner of Netanyahu in the crimes against Palestinians.”

The Arab American News editorial urged Arab Americans to “Punish Biden on Feb. 27 by voting “uncommitted”

The “uncommitted” campaign is expected in other states as well. Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz said Wednesday that a portion of Minnesota’s Somali population, the largest in the country, is likely to vote “uncommitted” in his state’s primary next week. Additionally, a nationwide “abandon Biden” campaign has seen momentum in other key swing states.

The Arab American Political Action Committee (AAPAC), a political organization established in 1998 and based in Dearborn, sent a mailing a week before the primary election to Arab American voters urging them to vote either “uncommitted” or “for anyone, but not Biden.” Another group recently formed, Listen to Michigan, has been urging voters to pick the Democratic ballot and vote “uncommitted.”

In 2020, Biden enjoyed a roughly 3-to-1 advantage in Dearborn, where nearly half of the city’s 110,000 residents are of Arab descent. In recent months, the city has become the epicenter of Democratic backlash to his support of Israel in the war on Gaza.

Biden dispatched senior officials from both his campaign and administration to the Dearborn area in recent months, aiming to address the backlash. But both efforts failed to sway Arab Americans or lower the intensity of their rejection of the Biden candidacy.

Yet close to 6,500 Dearborn voters cast their vote “uncommitted,” totaling 56 percent of the vote to Biden’s 40 percent (4,500 votes). Donald Trump, on the other hand, garnered almost 4,000 votes, with 64 percent of the Republican votes. The results were even starker in Muslim-majority Hamtramck, where “uncommitted” received 61 percent of the total vote. Hamtramck voted for Biden in 2020 by a 5-to-1 margin. Only 32 percent voted for Biden, who had won the city in November 2020. In the Republican presidential primary, 67.5 percent of Hamtramck voters voted for Trump, 18.4 percent voted “uncommitted” and 11.8 percent for Nikki Haley. A total of 1,749 voters in Hamtramck cast ballots, 1,743 for president.

Arab Americans make up 39 percent of Hamtramck’s population, most of them of Yemeni descent, with an additional 29 percent who are Asian American, a majority of them with roots in Bangladesh.

In Dearborn Heights, Biden received 47 percent of the vote, while uncommitted received 48 percent.

In Wayne County, the largest county in Michigan and overwhelmingly Democratic, Biden received 123,240 votes (78 percent), while uncommitted received 17 percent (26,500 votes).

It is worth noting that while the uncommitted campaign against Biden was making headlines, more Republican voters turned out in the Republican presidential primary than Democrats did in the Democratic presidential primary. The total number of Republican voters was more than 1,100,000, while the total number of Democratic voters was under 770,000.

The majority of the  uncommitted voters vow not to vote for Biden in November, which poses a questions over whether the backlash could swing November’s election. Trump and other Republicans also support the Israeli war on Gaza.

Two millage renewal proposals for the Dearborn Public Schools and Henry Ford College get high approval by Dearborn voters.

The Dearborn Public Schools operating millage renewal proposal received 72 percent of the votes, while the Henry Ford College operating millage ballot proposition received 66 percent of the votes.