President Joe Biden‘s path to reelection is facing additional speed bumps in the form of numerous third-party challengers.
Election experts and political operatives tell the Washington Examiner that while the likelihood of any third-party candidate winning the presidency remains highly improbable, there’s a very real chance their presence on general election ballots pulls enough votes away from Biden to secure a second term in office for former President Donald Trump.
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As of Monday, the president is facing two outright challenges from progressives. Cornel West announced in October his decision to run as an independent. West’s distancing from the Green Party, under which he had previously campaigned, opened the door for Jill Stein to announce her own Green Party bid this past Thursday.
Furthermore, multiple polls show Robert F. Kennedy Jr. earning around 20% support in a hypothetical three-way matchup with Biden and Trump. Kennedy announced his own independent run in October after an initial Democratic primary challenge to Biden earlier this year.
Meanwhile, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) said that he would not be running for reelection in the Senate in 2024, fueling speculation that he could top another independent ticket. Manchin is closely associated with No Labels, a group vowing to place a Republican and Democrat together on a presidential ticket. Former Maryland Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, an avowed Trump critic, has been floated as another potential No Labels candidate.
Though third-party candidates are common in modern presidential elections, widespread dissatisfaction with both Biden and Trump has fueled an appetite for other options.
A recent poll from the New York Times and Siena College showed Kennedy at 24% support, trailing both Biden and Trump by less than 10 points.
Combined, Kennedy and West also earned 20% and 25% in recent polls conducted by CNN and Quinnipiac University, respectively, and Trump leads Biden by as many as 4 points in virtually every poll conducted looking at three- and four-way races.
“The conditions are ripe for third-party candidates to get a bigger share of the vote than they typically do,” Kyle Kondik, managing editor at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, explained. “If Biden and Trump are nominated, both have weak favorability numbers, meaning a significant slice of the electorate will hold an unfavorable view of both candidates.”
“This is what happened in 2016, when third-party candidates got 6% of the vote. Third-party candidates very often poll better than they perform, but they still, collectively, should get some level of combined support,” he continued.
It’s not all bad news for Biden.
Though Kennedy is polling at the highest levels for a third-party candidate in 30 years, independent bids rarely perform that well on Election Day.
Seth Masket, a politics professor at the University of Denver, pointed to 2016 as an indication that, no matter the polling, voters tend to stray away from independent candidates in favor of the major party nominees.
“This was a telling election where you had two of the least popular party nominees in the history of polling,” Masket told VOA. “If in any year, you were going to see a lot of defection from the major parties, it would have been then, and it really didn’t happen. Ninety percent of the Democrats voted for Clinton and 90% of Republicans voted for Trump.”
A libertarian candidate could also potentially erode support for Trump. However, libertarians have never earned more than 3% in a general election, a mark set by former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson in 2016.
Furthermore, there’s a real chance that Manchin, should he announce, also pulls votes away from Trump, not Biden. Since Biden entered office, Manchin has frequently played foil to Biden’s sweeping legislative agenda, and his focus on fossil fuels and reducing the deficit generally appeals to conservative voters.
“What I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together,” Manchin said in a video announcing his plans not to seek reelection.
Still, there is a dangerous precedent Biden is looking to avoid.
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In 2016, Stein, then the Green Party nominee, earned more votes in a number of swing states than the margin by which Trump won those states over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, fueling blame that Stein spoiled a Clinton presidency.
And back in 1992, independent Ross Perot spent much of the year actually leading both former President George H.W. Bush and then-Gov. Bill Clinton. Though Perot eventually earned just under 19% of votes in the general election, his performance is largely credited with helping Clinton win his first term in the White House.
