The hope that a third-party candidate could threaten President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump‘s reelection appears to be fizzling out after several possible contenders declined to run in the 2024 race.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) became the latest candidate to pass on a presidential run when he announced on Friday that he wouldn’t launch an independent run with the centrist group No Labels.

“I just don’t think it’s the right time,” Manchin said during his announcement.

Manchin joins Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) and former Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan in passing up a presidential run. Romney, who is not seeking reelection to the Senate, also shot down interest in running for the White House again after Manchin floated him as a possible running mate.

Hogan resigned as co-chairman of No Labels last month, which prompted rumors he was gearing up for a third-party campaign. But then, Hogan announced he would seek the open Maryland Senate seat last week, a surprising move that ended months of speculation about a 2024 campaign.

A Republican has not served as a senator in Maryland in 37 years, but as a popular governor, he will give Democrats a serious challenge for the seat.

No Labels does not appear to be walking away from seeking ballot access in the wake of Manchin’s news not to run for president, which Democrats feared would harm Biden more than Trump in a November matchup.

“No Labels has spent 14 years working to create a movement for America’s commonsense majority, and we welcome Sen. Manchin’s efforts to strengthen it,” said the group’s national co-chairmen, former Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, Dr. Benjamin Chavis, and former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, in a statement to the Washington Examiner.

“No Labels is currently speaking with several exceptional leaders about serving on the presidential Unity ticket,” the leaders continued. “We are continuing to make great progress on our ballot access efforts and will announce in the coming weeks whether we will offer our line to a Unity ticket.”

Other third-party candidates, including Cornel West and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., still pose some level of threat to Biden or Trump, should he become the presumptive GOP nominee.

“I think it is clear that the third-party buzz has died down,” said Randy Jones, a Democratic political consultant. “We’re seeing what many of us thought was the inevitable outcome of this primary process, another round of Trump and Biden in November.”

However, voters have repeatedly signaled in polls they are unhappy with a rematch between the two men. More than three-quarters of the public, including about half of Democrats, said Biden should not seek reelection, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll last month.

On the Republican side, 56% said Trump should not run, including about a third of Republicans, the poll showed.

The sentiment is a key reason No Labels argued why a third-party option is needed. But Jones pointed out that there doesn’t appear to be enough support for candidates not named Biden or Trump.

“Just based on the numbers that we’re seeing, polling numbers and outcomes in early states. It does not seem that these challengers in primaries are finding enough of a foothold to be effective in their goals,” Jones said.

But Jones, a West Virginia native familiar with Manchin, claimed the senator’s perspective was needed.

“I think we are losing an important centrist voice in the Senate,” he added. “And while a lot of my Democratic colleagues have been very critical of the senator many times, sometimes rightfully so, I think he did offer a very important perspective that the country needs more of and, frankly, is losing at a rate faster than what is good for the country and good for our discourse.”

Biden handily defeated primary challenger Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) in New Hampshire’s primary, even though he wasn’t on the ballot. He also defeated Marianne Williamson during Nevada’s caucuses earlier this month, prompting her to drop out of the field.

Trump appears on the verge of defeating former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley during next week’s South Carolina primary, another sign of an impending 2020 rematch.

Brad Bannon, a Democratic strategist, said there is room for another presidential option, claiming Kennedy was the best option in an interview with the Washington Examiner.

“The question is whether RFK Jr. can find what his ballot access situation is. But there’s certainly room for a third-party candidate because there are lots of voters who don’t like Trump and Biden,” Bannon said. “But it doesn’t look promising that there’s going to be anybody making a serious dent in the third-party alternative movement, except for RFK Jr.”

Mounting a third-party bid requires extensive groundwork to get the required number of signatures for each state within a certain time window. The process is not universal across all 50 states, and it is an expensive operation.

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Kennedy’s campaign said he has qualified for the ballot in two states, Utah and New Hampshire. Yet his ballot access hurdle is far from over if he hopes to give Biden or Trump any serious competition.

“The political system, the way it’s designed, isn’t flexible enough to accommodate the voters who want an alternative to Trump and Biden, and that’s the basic problem,” Bannon said. “The system is designed to discourage third parties in general, and third-party candidates in particular. And it’s working.”