BEDFORD, Pennsylvania — The recent emergence of an “Uncommitted Vote” movement ahead of next month’s Democratic presidential primary, along with the surprisingly strong support for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent run for president, has experts wondering how that plays out for President Joe Biden here in November.
Earlier this week, the Democratic Socialists of America announced they were urging Pennsylvania Democratic voters to write in “uncommitted” on their primary ballots as a means to protest Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza.
In its press release, UncommittedPA said its goal was to garner 40,000 write-in votes statewide for “uncommitted.” The group’s website said this “will pressure the Biden administration to reconsider their position and call for a ceasefire.” The effort is partly inspired by the last-minute effort of the Listen to Michigan campaign that was highly successful in earning more than 100,000 “uncommitted” Democratic presidential primary voters.
Chris Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College, said the movement may extend past the far Left of the party.
“The protest vote within the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania isn’t just limited to the left wing,” he said. “It would not surprise me to see moderate Democrats or center-left independent voters who are unhappy with Biden to also do an uncommitted ballot write-in to express their dissatisfaction.”
Borick noted that Pennsylvania primary elections are closed: voters have to be registered as either a Democrat or Republican, and independent and unaffiliated voters are not eligible to vote in the party primary. But they can cast write-in votes, and so can Republicans if they want to join the protest.
“Since both Biden and Trump have no opponents, it would not surprise me to see Republicans also weighing in,” Borick said.
Borick said the other bit of stressful news this week for Democrats is that Kennedy chose 38-year-old lawyer Nicole Shanahan as his running mate. She is well regarded in the progressive community as a tech entrepreneur.
Borick said this choice was definitely a pitch toward the progressive Left. “She has been a past supporter of Biden, raised funds for the Democrats, and he chose someone who will be appealing to a chunk of voters who are either disenchanted or angry with Biden.”
A recent Bloomberg/Morning Consult survey of 803 registered Pennsylvania voters showed that if Kennedy is in the mix in Pennsylvania, former President Donald Trump leaps ahead of Biden with a nearly double-digit lead. The poll with Kennedy in it had Trump leading Biden 45% to 36% if independents Kennedy (8%) and Cornel West (1%) and Green Party candidate Jill Stein (1%) were on the ballot, too.
Democrats here still wonder if Jill Stein had not been on the ballot in 2016, would Hillary Clinton have narrowly prevailed over Trump?
“Stein earned almost the exact amount of voters, just over 40,000, which was just about the number of voters that Trump won over Clinton,” Borick said.
He said for those voters who are dissatisfied enough that they abandon their strong, historically Democratic voting patterns, it doesn’t take a lot to change an election in a tight race. Likewise, many analysts believe that progressive Ralph Nader’s presence on the ballot in Florida in 2000 cost Al Gore the election to George W. Bush.
In short, we’ve seen the voters that either don’t turn out or will take a shot at a third-party candidate affect the outcome. And it would be naive to say that couldn’t happen this cycle.
Borick said 2016 is a great example. “You can’t perfectly say that without Jill Stein, Hillary wins Pennsylvania or some of the other states that she had an impact. But you do the math and you could see the potential impact that these candidates could have on races,” he said.
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Borick said this time around for folks that are the so-called double haters or those that are uncommitted, maybe they like Biden more than Trump, but not enough that they’re going to stay with him if there’s an option there.
“Those are all big questions and I think we’ll start to see the beginning of some answers with how well the uncommitted vote goes here and where it comes from.”
