Biden loses – loss of base support

[Jessica, “What the ‘uncommitted’ vote says about Biden’s reelection”, ]

With nearly every ballot cast in the Democratic presidential primary, the message for Joe Biden is clear: A small but repeated share of the party’s base is not happy with him.

Tuesday’s primaries saw the final states cast presidential votes in the Democratic primary. More than 650,000 Democrats voted against Biden over the last four months by choosing options such as “uncommitted,” with others protesting in other states through write-ins, blank ballots, votes for other candidates and other means. Together, the hundreds of thousands of protest votes underscore the president’s political weakness with five months until Election Day. But they also provide a potential blueprint for a comeback.

The protest votes were often from areas that voted for him heavily four years ago, including among Arab American voters in Michigan and among young voters on college campuses across key battleground states. Those primary holdouts come from Biden’s electoral base, suggesting he may be able to win them back before the general election, especially since former President Donald Trump is even less aligned with those voters on many of the issues motivating those protest votes.

But the risks are enormous for Biden if even a small segment of the coalition that powered him to the White House stays home or chooses a third-party candidate instead.