In a key electoral year in the United States and the United Kingdom - the countries historically most responsible for the existence of a Jewish State in Palestine - something is becoming increasingly clear: the Gaza massacre is a factor that threatens the expectations of the Democratic president, Joe Biden, and the British Labor candidate, Keir Starmer.
In the United States, the flight of voting intention that Biden suffers due to the rejection produced by his support for the Israeli bombing of Gaza has been confirmed this week in the Democratic primaries. In Michigan earlier this month, more than 100,000 voters, 13% of the Democratic electorate, chose the “no compromise” option, a warning to Biden for her passivity in the face of the genocide in Gaza.
Now the punishment vote has been repeated in Minnesota, another state in the industrial Midwest. Nearly 20% of voters rejected Biden's Gaza policy in the Super Tuesday election. The same thing happens - although on a smaller scale - in other states that will be critical for Biden's re-election.
In Michigan, the 250,000 residents of Asian and Middle Eastern descent, 13% of the electorate, led the punishment vote. In Minnesota, rejection spans all demographic groups, especially students, Jewish activists and middle-class women, according to consulting firm Edison Research.
The Somali electorate in the state's cities has also proven key. Ilhan Omar, the Somali representative from Minnesota in Washington, along with Rashida Tlaib, the Palestinian representative from Michigan, have emerged as prominent leaders of the protest movement in the US against the genocide in Gaza.
Michigan and Minnesota are essential states for Biden to win the elections in November. The Democratic candidate won by a very narrow margin of 2.2% in Michigan in 2020, only 154,000 votes, after Trump's victory in 2016 by only 11,000 votes. “If Biden continues to be the banker of this massacre, many thousands of Democrats are going to stay home without voting and thus Trump will win,” said filmmaker Michael Moore, a native of Flint, Michigan, and organizer of the Listen to Michigan! .
According to a YouGov and CEPR poll in Washington, 62% of Democrats and 52% of the American electorate oppose sending weapons to Israel.
Something similar is happening in the United Kingdom, which together with the United States has staged the largest protests in Western countries against the genocide in Gaza.
In the by-election in Rochdale, a depressed textile town 20 kilometers from Manchester, with a large Pakistani-British community, the radical left candidate, George Galloway, achieved a spectacular victory last month after a campaign focused on genocide in Gaza.
Galloway took almost 40% of the total, twice as much as the Conservative and Labor candidates combined, in what is usually a Labor fiefdom. The secret: forge an alliance between voters of Asian origin – 30% of the population and more than 20% of the electorate – and other sectors of the electorate horrified by the massacre in Palestine.
“Many white voters have seen with their own eyes what genocide is and they feel anger,” Peter Higgins, Galloway's campaign organizer, said in an interview with La Vanguardia.
Gaza is already a global and, at the same time, a local political issue. “The politicians of the big parties are not doing what they should about Gaza,” summarized Imam, a voter of Pakistani origin in Rochdale who has lived in Terrassa for four years.
The result confirms the fears of some Labor strategists: that Starmer's unconditional support for Israel is already beginning to generate a danger in the face of the general elections, probably in November. Starmer has refused to defend a ceasefire – he only proposes a humanitarian pause – or to call the massacre a genocide.
The Labor Party – with an advantage over the Conservatives of almost 20 points in the polls – is still the favourite. But moral outrage over what happened in Gaza is beginning to “shift the tectonic plates” of the elections, Galloway said after his victory in Rochdale. According to the latest YouGov poll, 66% of Britons support an immediate ceasefire.
The Rochdale phenomenon is reproduced on the other side of the Atlantic, from Michigan to Georgia, with 60,000 Muslim voters. The African American vote is also mobilized. If he manages to join the electoral lists, the independent candidate, Cornel West, a veteran African-American intellectual and ally of the Palestinian cause, could subtract enough votes from Biden in critical states such as Michigan, Ohio or Georgia.
“Only time will tell if Biden has condemned his bid for re-election by blind support for Israel,” says Mitchell Plitnick, the Jewish activist in defense of Palestinian rights in the new book “Deluge” (OR BOOKs, 2024).
Others highlight Biden's dilemma, in other states like Florida where millions of voters – many of them Jewish retirees – are staunchly pro-Israel. “If Biden gets tougher on Bibi (Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister), he risks losing even more votes,” said Leon Lazaroff, a professor at Brooklyn College.
Galloway's new party intends to contest a dozen seats in the United Kingdom with important Asian communities and mobilized young people, such as Ilford and Bethnal Green in London.
Other pro-Palestine candidates will also stand, including former leader Jeremy Corbyn – expelled from Labor by Starmer – who will probably contest his Islington seat as a candidate for the Peace and Justice campaign. Andrew Feinstein, the veteran South African Jewish anti-apartheid activist, will contest Starmer's seat in the London borough of Holborn.
