It’s been a weird primary season. Joe Biden wasn’t on the ballot in New Hampshire, and his campaign spent no money, yet his allies organized a successful write-in campaign. In South Carolina, Biden won an impressive 96% of the vote. All of the contests thus far have been low-turnout affairs against largely unknown rivals, so it’s been hard to draw conclusions about Biden’s standing with this base.

Last night’s primary in Michigan was different. Biden had an opponent. There was a concerted campaign to get Democrats to vote “uncommitted” to pressure Biden to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. Michigan has the largest Arab-American population in the country. Biden’s approach to the conflict in Gaza has faced intense opposition in Michigan. Earlier this year, Arab-American leaders refused to meet with Biden campaign officials. Unlike Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson, the “Listen to Michigan” campaign is run by serious political organizers. It has the support of key Michigan officials like Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the first Palestinian-American woman in Congress, and former Rep. Andy Levin, who is part of the state’s most prominent political family.

Many participants in the uncommitted effort state they will not vote for Biden in the General Election absent a policy change. Michigan, of course, is a must-win state in November. There is no path to 270 that doesn't include Michigan.

Heading into last night, there were questions about how many votes “uncommitted” would receive and whether it would pressure the President to change course in the Middle East.

As of this writing, with 95% of the vote in, “uncommitted” is getting 13% of the vote. 

What does this result mean? Is the President in trouble in Michigan? Are we experiencing the first concerted intra-party opposition to Biden?

Well, it's kinda complicated. Let me explain.

Putting the Numbers in Perspective

The organizers of the uncommitted campaign said their goal was 10,000 votes because that was the margin Trump won the state by in 2016. With more than 100,000 votes case, they blew well past that goal. Unlike South Carolina and New Hampshire, turnout for the otherwise uncompetitive Democratic primary in Michigan was high. Approximately 900,000 votes were cast, compared to about 130,000 in South Carolina. These numbers represent about 3/4s of the turnout from the competitive Michigan primary in 2016.

More than 100,000 votes is a lot of votes. On the other hand, it still only represented about 15% of the vote. So, how do we interpret it?

Here are a few past benchmarks to measure the uncommitted results:

• In 2008, Michigan violated DNC rules by moving its primary to an earlier date in the calendar. The state lost its delegates, so the primary was nothing more than a beauty contest. Hillary Clinton decided to stay on the ballot. Barack Obama took his name off and refused to campaign in the state. Some Obama supporters organized an effort to get other Obama supporters to register their support by voting uncommitted. In that election, uncommitted received 280,000 (38%) votes...