It’s hard to ignore the reports that an independent or minor party candidate may derail President Joe Biden’s reelection bid.
“Democrats’ Third-Party Worries Increase”
Fears among Democrats increase as Cornel West mulls a third-party run.
The article “Democrats Fear Third-Party Run As Joe Manchin Heads To New Hampshire” states, “
Interminably so.
At this point in the narrative, I would ordinarily warn you that a third-party candidate has slim pickings the following year, and I am telling you that. Third-party candidates are a major reason why 2024 looks like the kind of race Biden may lose.
First off, it’s important to note that early 2024 general election polls show a close race. Biden is tied with former President Donald Trump (the most likely GOP nominee at this point) in the polls, or he is a point or two ahead, depending on how you average the polls.
This is significant because a popular third-party candidate would need to emerge if the polls were predicting a landslide.
Instead, it may only take a small percentage of voters to choose a third-party candidate over Biden or Trump in a hypothetical showdown.
Only in 2000, when Democrat Al Gore lost Florida and the presidency by a total of 537 votes, can I refer to an election in which a third-party nominee likely cost one candidate the election. If Green Party contender Ralph Nader hadn’t been on the ballot, more of his supporters would have voted for Democratic candidate Al Gore instead of Republican candidate George W. Bush, according to exit polls.
Given the historically low approval ratings of both Biden and Trump, it seems likely that some third-party voters already exist this year. I mentioned a few weeks ago that roughly 20% of Americans think poorly of both Biden and Trump.
There is an underlying assumption that Biden is unpopular because of the headlines and the anxieties Democrats have of a third-party candidature. Concerns about a possible third-party bid were not quite as widespread at this point in the 2020 campaign as they are now.
This highlights one of the key distinctions between this cycle and 2020: Biden’s unpopularity is skyrocketing. If he wants to be reelected, the president will have to win over a sizeable number of voters who currently dislike him. In 2020, he only needed the support of his supporters.
Naturally, Trump is in the same boat. There has rarely been a time when the former president’s favorability rating was higher than his unfavourable rating. In 2016, he was elected president with the support of a plurality of the almost 20% of voters who had an unfavourable assessment of both him and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
If Republicans are so concerned about a spoiler, why haven’t we heard them mention one? A contributing factor is that few conservatives or Republicans are making headlines by considering a run as an independent or third-party candidate.
The other major factor is that those who don’t like either Biden or Trump seem to like Biden. Among people who don’t like either candidate, Biden has a 7-point edge over Trump in the average of the last three polls conducted by Quinnipiac University. In 2016, people who now identify with this group voted for Trump.
In national polls I’ve seen over the past few months, Biden has lost ground to Trump when compared to when the two candidates are the only ones considered.
According to FiveThirtyEight’s Geoffrey Skelley, the gap is only 1-3 percentage points. A swing of just a few percentage points could swing an election if the margin of victory is still so slim.
All this discussion about possible third-party candidates could, of course, be just that. The election is still almost a year away. In 2016, Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson received roughly 3% of the national vote although early polling had indicated him to be closer to 10%. This is typical of independent and third-party candidates, who tend to lose support as Election Day approaches.
Biden and the Democrats would do well to pray for a similar trend if he continues to be so unpopular.
