Almost 40,000 Democrats — 12% of New York’s primary electorate — voted “blank” Tuesday to protest President Biden’s stance on Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, an analysis reveals.
The unofficial tally by the state Board of Elections only reports votes received by named candidates.
As of Thursday afternoon, Biden had received 269,099 votes, while author and self-help guru Marianne Williamson got 14,447 votes and Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) received 10,647 votes.
But a more accurate tally of the total vote can be calculated by looking at the number of votes reported for delegates to the Democratic National Convention.
Only Biden had delegates on the ballot and “blank” votes were also recorded.
Crunching those numbers — as City & State did — finds another 39,271 “blank” votes for president.
With the blank votes included, the president’s share of the vote drops from 91% of the total to 79%.
The ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza is causing a political headache for Biden by creating a large divide in the Democratic Party.
Polls now show an overwhelming majority of Democrats want a cease-fire in Gaza, which Israel’s military has leveled to root out Hamas terrorists who invaded the Jewish State last Oct. 7.
Anti-Israel activists in other states have waged similar campaigns urging Democrats to vote blank or “uncommitted” instead of for Biden in primary elections — particularly in Michigan, where more than 100,000 did just that.
Israel, America’s longest-standing Middle Eastern ally, has enjoyed strong bipartisan support.
But lefty lawmakers, including democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have joined younger party members in calling Israel’s retaliatory strikes “genocide.”
Biden needs the backing of anti-Israel voters to win re-election in a rematch against Republican former President Donald Trump, advocates for a Gaza cease-fire say.
The Leave It Blank Coalition, which urged New York voters to protest Biden at the ballot box, crowed over the results.
“We’re incredibly proud that the Leave it Blank campaign brought together over 50 organizations, from every major city in the state, to mobilize their communities and deliver these results in less than three weeks with a budget of under $2,500. But our work is far from over,” said organizer Brittany Ramos DeBarros.
“Just this week the Israeli army killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers, resulting in multiple humanitarian groups suspending their operations in Gaza. Now the situation is even more dire, with over one million people—including hundreds of thousands of children—on the brink of famine.”
Despite the outcry, the White House and Congress are poised to approve billions of dollars in additional weapons transfers to Israel, on top of a $2.5 billion weapons package approved last week
“Every day this catastrophe continues, more innocent lives are lost, more homes are destroyed, more people are starving, and more children are deprived of their childhood. President Biden will need to build a broad and diverse coalition like ours if he hopes to win in November and that will remain impossible until he brings this depravity to an end,” said DeBarros.
A New York Democratic Party official neither disputed nor expressed surprise at the 12% figure.
“The far left is about 15% of the party. We always have a protest vote,” the insider said.
However, the official predicted that the disgruntled will rally behind Biden on Nov. 5.
“You got two choices,” this person said.
“Do you want to re-elect Donald Trump or not re-elect Donald Trump?”