Stinging like a bee: Which 2024 third-party candidate most threatens Biden’s bid?

Democrats over the past century-plus have a mixed record when it comes to third-party candidates. Unfortunately for them, the trend in the 21st century isn’t going in the right direction, as their last two encounters with prominent independent candidates ended disastrously.

So, the growing list of alternative White House hopefuls has to be a pressing concern for President Joe Biden and his reelection team with the 2024 election 11 months off. As recently as October, independent candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West both kept Biden and his likely Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, under 40% in polling.

BIDEN LOSING YOUNG VOTERS TO TRUMP AS HE FALLS BEHIND IN TWO SWING STATES

Jill Stein, the 2016 Green Party nominee, is running again in 2024, and Democrats have long memories of the electoral damage she arguably inflicted against their party’s nominee two cycles ago, Hillary Clinton — a third-party effort from the far Left that, they contend, inversely boosted Trump into the presidency.

And the 2024 independent field could still grow. No Labels, a self-proclaimed nonpartisan political movement, is threatening to field a presidential nominee who, at least in theory, would appeal to a supposedly broad swath of centrist voters. Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, and retiring Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) have both been mentioned as possible No Labels nominees.

Additionally, a prominent Never Trump Republican, former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), is out with a new book detailing her split with the GOP over Trump after Jan. 6 and is at least toying with the idea of a third-party bid.

The multicandidate race is shaping up amid a backdrop of two major party candidates whom few voters are excited to support, a hyperpolarized electorate, and political parties struggling to control the direction their rank and file is headed. It’s all a recipe for outsiders to have an outsize impact on the November 2024 general election.

Kennedy, Stein, and West aren’t going to win in 2024. It’s not even clear each will have ballot access in all key swing states. Yet they could force the parties to change the way they target voters. Or they may play spoiler by pulling just enough votes from one of the two major party candidates in the right states to hand the other a victory.

Voters may return home to their longtime parties
Still, even a plethora of independent candidates wouldn’t necessarily scramble the expected Biden-Trump race. After all, there’s a long history of polls showing significant support for alternative candidates, only to see that dissipate as Election Day approaches.

A June 18, 1980, Washington Post headline, “Anderson Could Win, Pollsters Agree,” talked up the chances of independent presidential candidate John B. Anderson, a liberal Republican congressman from Illinois who bolted the party over its rightward drift. But bullish polls numbers had long faded four months-plus later, in a three-way race with Democratic President Jimmy Carter and Republican nominee Ronald Reagan.

“In a pattern familiar to independent candidates, Mr. Anderson’s support drifted as voters turned to candidates who they believed could actually win the White House. On Election Day, when Mr. Reagan won in a landslide, Mr. Anderson ended up with 6.6 percent of the popular vote,” said the Dec. 4, 2017, New York Times obituary of Anderson after he died at 95.

Something similar could happen in 2024, though in the Trump era of politics, anything is possible.

While polarized electorates can prove to be the perfect soil for alternative candidates to thrive in, the increased importance of a handful of battleground states dilutes the sway Kennedy, Stein, and West can have, according to Eric Loepp, associate professor in the Department of Politics, Government, and Law at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater.

“What we really have to look at is how are these candidates doing in the handful of states that will dictate which direction the White House goes in 2024,” Loepp told the Washington Examiner, citing Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

“And historically, if you look at recent elections, the swing-iest of swing states tend to also be the states that have the lowest levels of third-party voting,” Loepp said.

Bernard Tamas, associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, likened third-party candidates’ effect on elections to a stinging bee. They latch onto a policy or program they feel is being neglected by the major parties, make enough noise to convince mainstream candidates they need to address that problem, and force it into the party’s new platform.

However, in the process, Tamas said, candidates usually wither as a result of the major parties picking up the policy themselves.

“They kind of co-opt whatever it is those issues are that the third party is bringing up,” Tamas said. “And then that leads to the third party disappearing.”

Democrats’ complicated history with third-party candidates
Democrats once openly benefited from multicandidate fields. In 1912, Democratic nominee Woodrow Wilson, the governor of New Jersey, won easily in a split field. Former President Theodore Roosevelt, who ran under the banner of the new Progressive Party, or “Bull Moose” Party, split the GOP vote with his onetime anointed successor, President William Howard Taft, with whom he had a serious falling out. Socialist Party nominee Eugene V. Debs, running from the far Left, also made Wilson more appealing to a big set of centrist voters.

In 1948, Democratic President Harry Truman won a full White House term by defeating not only Republican rival Thomas Dewey, the New York governor, but a third-party “Dixiecrat” ticket headed by South Carolina Gov. Strom Thurmond, running on an anti-civil rights agenda. Former Vice President Henry Wallace, who favored reconciliation with the Soviet Union in the Cold War’s early years, bracketed the field from the far Left. Like Debs before him, Wallace’s candidacy likely helped make Truman more appealing as a relatively centrist candidate.

In 1992, President Bill Clinton likely benefited from the candidacy of independent Ross Perot, who nabbed 19% of the general election vote. Bill Clinton defeated President George H.W. Bush and ended 12 years of Republican White House rule. Republicans to this day argue Perot made the difference in Bill Clinton’s win. Political science studies over the past three decades suggest Perot pulled votes from both camps but, at the very least, emphasized Bill Clinton’s message of change.

However, for Democrats, third-party political winds turned chillier at the start of the 21st century as Bill Clinton tried to hand off the White House to his vice president, Al Gore. The neck-and-neck race between Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the GOP nominee, famously came down to a razor-thin margin in Florida. Bush won the Sunshine State by 537 votes out of nearly 6 million cast. But longtime consumer advocate Ralph Nader, the Green Party nominee, won 97,488 votes in Florida — 1.64% of the total and seemingly more than enough to deny Gore victory.

That marked the first time in 112 years that the presidential race’s popular vote loser won an Electoral College majority and with it the White House. It happened 16 years later when Hillary Clinton outpaced Trump by more than 3 million in the popular vote but narrowly lost the longtime Democratic strongholds of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Many Democrats still blame Stein, a fringe figure who was part of a third-party boom in 2016, along with Libertarian Gary Johnson, a former New Mexico Republican governor. The pair combined for more than 6% of the national popular vote. In Michigan, specifically, Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 10,704 votes, while Stein earned 51,463 votes, good for 1.07% of the total.

Looking to 2024, how much support each independent candidate will draw is an open question. But here’s why they could offer voters some appeal, or not.

RFK Jr. 
The son of slain attorney general and Sen. Robert Kennedy (D-NY) and nephew to the late President John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made waves when he announced in August he was challenging Biden for the Democratic nomination. The environmental lawyer and activist, who has never held public office, had the benefit of a president sagging in polls and a famous last name.

(AP photo)

Kennedy found support on the Right for his willingness to challenge Biden, and his popularity was only helped by a perception that he would weaken the president. Kennedy was also willing to question whether Biden, at 81, should try to run for reelection. Kennedy also notably voiced skepticism about COVID-19 vaccines.

But when the initial bump faded and the Democratic National Committee made it clear it was going to insulate Biden from the challenge, Kennedy switched his party affiliation to run as an independent.

Besides his name, Kennedy is best known for his activism and controversial anti-vaccination views that stretch well beyond the COVID-19 inoculations. If those aren’t toxic enough to voters, he faces an uphill battle of running on something, the pandemic, that will be 4 years old when voters go to cast their ballots.

Kennedy’s “wild card” status, running as an independent on something that isn’t as animating as it was three years ago, puts him at the bottom of the power rankings in terms of who could have the biggest effect on the election — for now, said Tamas, of Valdosta State University, in south Georgia.

Extenuating circumstances could benefit Kennedy, Loepp said, but the timing would have to line up in a way that includes a surge in people suffering complications from vaccines at the same time they’re going to the polls.

“If there were, next year, let’s say, a wave of people dealing with terrible side effects from the COVID vaccine or the boosters — if that happened in October and he’s on the ballot, he would potentially have a swell of support because, again, he could point to something and say, ‘I told you so,’” Loepp said.

But the probability of Kennedy pulling a meaningful number of voters, in that perfect storm scenario, would only go from “small to slightly less small,” Loepp said.

Cornel West 
Already acknowledging the need to pick off select voters who support specific policies in particular states, West has set his sights on at least one place Biden has shown vulnerability: Arab American voters in Michigan. The former academic at Harvard University and Princeton University is a virulent Israel critic, even in its war against Hamas after the Oct. 7 attacks by the Palestinian terrorist group that claimed 1,200 lives in the Jewish state.

(AP photo)

West in October jumped ship from running on the Green Party ticket in an effort to “break the grip of the duopoly and give power to the people.”

While West has some name recognition, the self-proclaimed socialist might have shot his campaign in the foot by abandoning the apparatus that comes with being a candidate associated with a party.

Loepp said it is hard to gauge how West will do because his pursuit of an independent bid signals he’s searching for a party to run with rather than running on a message that would appeal to voters. West will be trying to pick up voters to Biden’s left, but he faces a two-pronged problem of having to obtain tens of thousands of signatures to get on ballots and no infrastructure to protect him if he begins to gain any momentum.

“And if he were to actually start having success running as an independent,” Loepp said, “I imagine that the [Democratic National Committee] and the [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] and everybody in the party apparatus on the Democratic side would probably be leaning pretty hard into him.”

As of now, it appears unlikely West has a message that will appeal to any significant number of voters. He will likely struggle even to give voters a chance to cast a ballot for him. If he did figure out a way to make headway in a vital state, such as Michigan, any support he wins could eat into Biden’s share.

Jill Stein 
Unlike the other big names standing up third-party campaigns, Stein has a party structure around her and recent experience with presidential politics.

(AP photo)

Unfortunately for the Green Party, experience hasn’t meant success. Stein garnered fewer votes in 2016 (1.4 million) than Libertarian nominee Johnson (4.5 million). And there’s a possibility Stein’s past political experience will take the shine off her campaign because she doesn’t have the novelty of being a new candidate to fall back on, Loepp said.

On the other hand, in addition to having the luxury of the party infrastructure around her, propping her up and protecting her if needed, Stein also has a clear message Kennedy and West lack.

Loepp said Stein could be primed for voters by circumstances leading up to the election outside of her control, in a similar way to Kennedy. Any natural or nuclear disaster, or combination of them, would feed into Stein’s narrative as the candidate the country needs.

Stein has the clearest platform of the three major alternatives available to Democrats and Republicans, which includes accusing Israel of committing war crimes in its defensive war against Hamas, and said the United States needs to stop sending aid to the country. However, that clashes hard with U.S. public opinion — 55% of voters said Israel was taking appropriate military action to defend itself and prevent Hamas from attacking again, per a Wall Street Journal poll released Dec. 11.

Horns of a dilemma for Biden
While there are all kinds of variables and unforeseen circumstances ahead, Biden appears to be the one who has the most to lose from any of these candidates having a modicum of success. And therein lies the biggest problem for third parties — besides the bee effect, which Tamas described as creating a natural cycle of surges and deaths that reshape the large coalitions on the Left and Right.

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The problems facing anyone seeking the presidency who isn’t working within the two-party system aren’t new, but they are exacerbated when the media environment they need to win attention is more expensive than ever. Without coverage, the cash, support, and voters aren’t there to prop them up. And any support they receive is more likely to hurt the candidate more closely aligned with the third party’s policy prescriptions.

Still, Biden’s supporters are understandably skittish about any rise in support by third-party candidates. After all, success, Loepp said, almost certainly means pulling voters away from Biden and helping send Trump back to the White House.