Why Joe Biden Will Be Alarmed by the U.K. Election Results

President Joe Biden may be looking across the Atlantic with trepidation as Britain's Labour Party suffers heavy losses among Muslim voters across the country.

On Thursday, England and Wales saw hundreds of local council, mayoral and police crime commissioner elections taking place, with the opposition Labour Party scoring a number of key victories in the latest sign that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and the Tory Party are on course for crushing defeat in the next as-yet unannounced U.K. General Election.

However, with millions of votes still to be counted, Labour has already been found to have lost scores of votes in areas with significant Muslim populations, with the BBC reporting that the party's vote is down 8 percent compared to last year in wards where more than one in 10 residents identify as Muslim. The falling Muslim support is seen as a direct response to how Labour and its leader, Keir Starmer, reacted to Israel's war against Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza.

Just like Biden, Starmer has been widely criticized for his handling of the Israel conflict, including not calling for a full ceasefire to end the violence sooner. A YouGov survey published March 1 found that just 14 percent of Britons believe Starmer has handled Labour's response to the conflict well, compared to 52 percent who believe he has handled it badly.

Labour's national campaign coordinator, Pat McFadden, said on the LBC radio station that the war in Gaza has affected Labour's support with the Muslim population in the local elections.

"There's no point in me coming on your program and denying that's the case," McFadden said. "And I'm not surprised that people have strong feelings about this issue. And so many thousands of innocent people have been killed and people want it to stop, and we do, too."

Biden has also faced intense scrutiny from progressive members of his own party and the U.S. Muslim population for his handling and response to Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza.

The criticism against the president has risen in recent weeks amid tension and violence on college campuses across the country with pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

The outcry could affect the 2024 presidential election, especially if it decides who is victorious in the swing state of Michigan, which has the largest U.S.-Arab population in the nation. Biden won Michigan by three points over Donald Trump in 2020 and will need to hold onto it and other battleground states if he hopes to win a second term in office.

There has already been a sign of discontent in Michigan over Biden's handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict. In February, Biden easily won the Democratic primary in the Wolverine State. However, the results were slightly tarnished by "uncommitted" getting more than 100,000 votes (13.3 percent) in what was seen as a major protest vote against the president.

In April, an Emerson College Polling/The Hill swing state poll showed that Trump is just one point ahead of Biden in Michigan (45 percent to 44 percent).

Newsweek contacted Biden's campaign team for comment via email.

Elsewhere, a group of Muslim leaders in several 2024 swing states such as Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania announced in December 2023 the #AbandonBiden campaign over anger at the president's response to the Israel-Hamas conflict.

"We believe that we are not going to allow this country to continue to uplift the military industrial complex and continue to get us into wars and continue to not value life," organizer Jaylani Hussein told Newsweek.

According to FiveThirtyEight's national polling-average tracker for the presidential election, Trump is ahead with 41.4 percent, followed by Biden with 40.7 percent.