Does Joe Biden’s re-election campaign have a Gaza problem?

IT IS NEVER nice for a campaign when a steadfast constituency turns irate and threatens to withhold their votes; it is the stuff of nightmares when they happen to reside in a swing state that may decide the next presidential election. Incensed over the Israeli military campaign in Gaza—which is fast approaching 30,000 Palestinian deaths—Muslim-American and Arab-American voters staged a campaign to withhold their votes for President Joe Biden in Michigan’s Democratic primary. Rashida Tlaib, a prominent Palestinian-American congresswoman representing the heavily Muslim western suburbs of Detroit, encouraged her fellow Democrats to vote “uncommitted”, as did most prominent Muslim officials in the state. Over 100,000 Michiganders voted “uncommitted”, representing 13.3% of the total vote.The threat to Mr Biden is not veiled. “There is not really a path that does not go through Michigan. And there is not really a path that goes through Michigan without the Muslim community,” says Hira Khan of Emgage, a Muslim-voter mobilisation group. Michigan has had a recent spate of tight elections. In 2016 Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton by a margin of 10,704 votes (or 0.22% of those cast); in 2020 Mr Biden won by 154,188 (or 2.78%). The state also has one of the highest concentrations of voters with Middle Eastern and Muslim backgrounds. In 2020 there were an estimated 206,000 Muslims in the electorate—roughly 2.8% of the total—and most of them probably voted for Democrats. If the anti-Gaza backlash persisted through November (including among the three-quarters of young voters who disapprove of Mr Biden’s handling of it), the effect would be marginal. But in a state like Michigan, marginal effects can matter quite a lot.