Mass. voters who picked ‘no preference’ hope to send a message to Biden

President Joe Biden listens as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni speaks during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, March 1, 2024, in Washington.Evan Vucci/Associated Press

See results of the Democratic and Republican races in Massachusetts, and all of the Democratic and Republican Super Tuesday primaries across the United States.

CAMBRIDGE — Supporters of the Vote No Preference campaign gathered at Andala Coffee House, a Middle Eastern restaurant, to watch the numbers roll in on Super Tuesday in hopes that enough “no preference” ballots were cast to send a message to President Biden.

Unofficial primary results in Cambridge showed that 2,397 voters chose “no preference” — nearly 17 percent of the 14,282 Democratic primary ballots cast — while 10,851 cast ballots for Biden. In Boston, 7,288 voters cast a ballot for “no preference,” while 40,141 voted for Biden. In Somerville, 2,596 picked “no preference,” compared to 7,940 for Biden, while in Northampton, 823 chose “no preference” compared to 4,193 who voted for Biden, according to the unofficial results that were available Wednesday morning.

Across the state, 54,150 voters — about 9.4 percent — chose “no preference,” according to the latest Democratic presidential primary election results from the Associated Press.

Garnering 83 percent of the vote, Biden won a decisive victory in Massachusetts over author Marianne Williamson and Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips, who were also on the Democratic ballot. As results continued to come in Tuesday, “no preference” was winning an even bigger slice of the vote than either Williamson or Phillips, in an indication of dissatisfaction with the president among liberal voters.

Tuesday’s presidential primary, however, wasn’t the only time that proportion of voters picked “no preference” over the Democratic incumbent. Back in 2012, when former president Barack Obama was running for re-election, and there was no organized “no preference” protest vote, more than 10 percent of voters cast “no preference” ballots.

Still, on Tuesday night, organizers celebrated the totals as a victory. “Not bad for a five day turnaround,” said Sara Halawa, one of the campaign’s organizers. By 10:45 p.m., the group had garnered over 27,000 votes, and they felt the momentum.

“It looks like it’s going to be something like 50,000 or 60,000 [votes] based on how things are going,” Nathan Foster, 27, of Medford, said at around 10:30 p.m., long after Biden was declared the winner. “This is so many votes for no preference, I’m really happy and satisfied with it.”

Omar Siddiqi, a 41-year old resident of Brighton, said this year’s numbers exceeded his expectations.

“We had no clue that we were going to do this, even a week ago,” said Siddiqi. “So I think, given the speed with which this came together, this is exceeding expectations. We would have been happy with 10,000 votes.”

Aly Madan, a 32-year-old from Roxbury, who started the Vote No Preference instagram page for Massachusetts last Wednesday, was also pleased.

“At first I thought ‘I’ll get like 100 of my friends to do this, maybe a thousand.’ Now, we have hundreds of volunteers and thousands of phone calls and texts being made,” said Madan. “I’m just so excited that people are engaged and are aligned and are doing what they can.”

The Massachusetts Vote No Preference effort mirrored a similar movement in Michigan, the Uncommitted Campaign, that amassed over 101,000 “uncommitted” votes during the state’s Democratic Primary last Tuesday, according to the Associated Press.

Many Democratic voters are angry at Biden’s support for Israel in its ongoing war with Hamas that has led to the deaths of 30,000 Palestinians living in Gaza since October.

“When we saw what happened in Michigan last Tuesday, we realized we absolutely have to mobilize here in Massachusetts on Super Tuesday,” said Halawa. “And in the days that followed, we reached out to all of the different people we knew that cared about this, and a coalition came together.”

Over 300 volunteers spent the past three days advising thousands of Massachusetts voters, through phone calls, protests, and over 220,000 text messages, to vote “no preference.” The group gathered in front of several major polling sites across the state on Tuesday morning to suggest people cast their vote in protest of President Biden on their Democratic ballots.

“Over the last four days, we’ve had hundreds of volunteers working with us,” said Cicia Lee, a 31-year-old resident of Jamaica Plain who helped mobilize the coalition.

Some attendees at Tuesday night’s watch party were hopeful that their campaign might motivate Biden to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. Merrie Najimy, a Watertown resident and a former president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, said that ending the genocide is completely within the the president’s control.

“In the 80s, Ronald Reagan picked up the phone and called Menachem Begin, who was then the prime minister of Israel, and told him to stop the bombing of Southern Lebanon. In 20 minutes, it was over,” said Najimi. “If Biden is saying he doesn’t have that power, then why would we elect [him]?”

James Pindell of the Globe staff contributed to this report.