President Joe Biden won the state’s Democratic presidential primary earlier this week, obtaining 84% of the roughly 65,500 total votes, according to tallies from the secretary of the state’s office.
No other candidate managed to get even 3% of the vote. But about 11.6% of Democratic voters cast a ballot for “uncommitted,” a higher share than in 2020 and 2016.
The uncommitted vote was seen as a way to protest Biden’s support for Israel after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas and Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
“They’re wasting their vote, and they are wasting my time,” Gov. Ned Lamont said. “The hottest place in hell is reserved for those who stay neutral or can’t make up their minds at a time of moral crisis.”
The uncommitted vote varied by town. In seven towns, more than 20% of voters choose uncommitted, although some of these towns didn’t exceed 300 votes across all candidates.
But among those towns is New Haven, where over 700 people chose uncommitted, making up 21% of all votes cast. Uncommitted won 51% of the vote in Ward 9, or East Rock.
The wards around East Rock also had higher-than-average uncommitted votes. Many Yale graduate students live there, and there has been sustained activism on the Israel-Palestine issue on Yale's campus, with heavy graduate student involvement.
Other large cities had a lower uncommitted vote, with Stamford at 7.4%, Bridgeport at 11.6%, Waterbury at 17.5%, and Hartford at 14.4%.