Michigan primary to test Biden among key voting groups in swing state

Voters will make their way to the polls in Michigan today, in a presidential primary that will test how much Joe Biden and Donald Trump should be worried about winning key groups of voters for the general election in the critical swing state.

Both face challenges within their respective parties. After underperforming in the polls and struggling with suburban and college-educated Republican voters in earlier primaries, Trump’s campaign in Michigan is dealing with a state Republican party whose local leaders have been embroiled in an ugly factional dispute, while Biden faces a campaign by antiwar activists to abandon him over the president’s continued support for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

The push by Democratic voters to vote “uncommitted” in today’s primary has picked up steam since organizers launched it in early February, with dozens of local elected officials in greater Detroit publicly endorsing the push.

That effort has the support of the Dearborn mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, whose Detroit suburb has the largest percentage of Arab Americans of any city in the US. He wrote in a February op-ed in the New York Times that his constituents were “haunted by the images, videos and stories streaming out of Gaza” and felt “a visceral sense of betrayal” by Biden’s support for Israel.

The campaign also has support from Representative Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian American who represents Dearborn in Congress and whose sister is leading the effort, and the backing of former representative Andy Levin, who is Jewish and close to organized labor in the state, and former representative Beto O’Rourke.

In an interview with the Guardian, Layla Elabed, Tlaib’s sister and campaign director for Listen to Michigan, said organizers were