2024-04-02 13:27:34
American President Joe Biden and his rival Donald Trump will be tested at the polls in another round of the American primary elections this Tuesday (2). Voting will be held in Wisconsin, New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island for both Republicans and Democrats.
Luciana Rosa, RFI correspondent in New York
With each party’s candidates practically defined, the American primaries have become a kind of thermometer of the electorate’s mood in the face of a repeat of the 2020 contest. Biden and Trump are the only important candidates remaining on the ballot, but they are not the only options voters’ vote.
In New York, for example, a movement called “Leave it Blank“, is trying to mobilize Democratic voters to vote blank to protest the American government’s stance on the conflict in the Gaza Strip.
The protest vote began in Michigan, where 101,000 Democratic voters chose to vote “uncommitted” in the February caucuses. They were followed by approximately 263,000 other voters in the five states who voted on Super Tuesday.
New York will also be the stage for the demonstration
Despite being a state considered liberal and with a Democratic tendency, New York does not intend to be an easy match for the current president. The city has been the scene of several pro-Palestinian demonstrations since the beginning of the war between Israel and the Hamas group.
A new protest is scheduled to take place this Tuesday afternoon (2) and it is estimated that Biden could suffer a new warning at the polls in today’s rallies.
“Every blank vote shows that we are not just protesters in the streets – we are voters willing to go to the polls,” said a post from the movement on social media.
Last Friday afternoon (29), the group was in some mosques in Queens, distributing leaflets and instructing the population to vote blank.
According to the campaign “Leave it Blank“, “every day that Biden refuses to stop the flow of weapons and call for a ceasefire, he is delaying the building of a diverse coalition that will be needed to win in November, and choosing to put democracy at risk.”
Key race in Wisconsin
In Wisconsin’s presidential caucuses, the race is now less about winning delegates and more about paving the way to win the crucial state in November. With this in mind, President Joe Biden chose Milwaukee, the largest city in Wisconsin, to announce the investment of US$3.3 billion in infrastructure for more than 40 states, on March 13th. The current president also took advantage of the trip to inaugurate his state campaign headquarters, also in Milwaukee.
His competitor, Donald Trump, is expected to make his first campaign visit to the state this Tuesday, to participate in a rally in Green Bay. In addition, Milwaukee will be the venue for the Republican National Convention to be held in July.
Wisconsin is in constant contention between Republicans and Democrats. Unlike other states, local preferences tend to oscillate between conservatives and progressives.
In the 2016 elections, for example, Donald Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin by 22,748 votes, a margin of just 0.76 percentage points. Four years later, Joe Biden won by an even tighter margin of 20,682 votes, or 0.63 percentage points.
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