Organizers of a protest movement opposing President Joe Biden’s support for Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza hoped to send the 2024 presumptive Democratic nominee a message in Tuesday’s Wisconsin Democratic primary by securing 20,682 “uninstructed” votes, the state’s version of “uncommitted.”
The specific figure is the number of votes by which Biden defeated Donald Trump in Wisconsin in the 2020 presidential election. As of Wednesday morning, with 99 percent of votes counted, “uninstructed” had amassed 47,846 votes—more than double the organizers’ goal and a potentially concerning result for Biden in a key swing state.
The president easily won in Wisconsin with 88.6 percent of the ballot, according to the Associated Press. But the protest vote’s 8.4 percent was nevertheless celebrated by the protest vote’s organizers, who had encouraged Americans to let “President Biden know that Wisconsin stands against genocide.”