In an election season full of unknowns, President Joe Biden is forced to contend with a changing voting picture that could see a handful of third-party or independent parties chip away at his support.
Even as he prepares to take on a former president whose legal troubles represent their own X-factor for racing, the independent candidates are rolling out their own threats with Democratic operatives warning that third-party actions could return Donald Trump to power.
Biden’s team must draw up scenarios for a vote that involves or is likely to involve political royalty, a camera-friendly centrist, a left-wing critic of the “American empire” and an environmentalist labeled a “Russian asset.”
Trump’s team is making its own preparations around the phenomenon, claiming it will play to the former president’s advantage.
President Joe Biden is now trailing Donald Trump in the polls. Trump’s campaign says third-party challengers receive more support from their opponent than from Trump
Trump is well aware of the role of potential spoilers: He may have made gains thanks to Green Party candidate Jill Stein in 2016, and was accused of promoting a Kanye West candidacy in 2020. (Trump denied his involvement, telling DailyMail.com that year that “No, not at all,” adding, “except that I get along with him really well. I like him. I like his wife.”)
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the vaccine skeptic who has switched to an independent position, outranks Biden over Trump by a five-to-four ratio, according to a senior Trump adviser.
RFK Jr. has moved to the right, but still risks retreating from nostalgic Democrats or any of a significant number of party members who are signaling their disapproval of Biden. Still, “he will have enormous problems accessing the ballots,” the official said. He has built a war chest that should help with that.
A new poll from JL Partners for DailyMail.com found that RFK Jr. drew more from Biden than from Trump. A Wall Street Journal analysis concluded that Biden loses more voters than Trump when voters are surveyed and a third-party option is provided.
Manchin represents the latest nightmare scenario for Biden, in part because he has worked with the “No Labels” group that has been preparing to loan out his prefabricated infrastructure and voting sites in 19 states. He has also fired off his signature charges against partisanship among Republicans and Democrats, after torturing Biden for two years but ultimately helping push through his signature Inflation Reduction Act.
The group is pushing to gain access to the election before settling on a candidate, and former Republican Maryland Governor Larry Hogan is also in the mix.
David Gillespie, a retired political scientist from the College of Charleston who has written books on third parties, mentions RFK, Jr. and No-labels as the forces likely to have an impact.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is preparing for a bus tour and could make a third party move
Robert F Kennedy Jr. has a well-known name and a fundraising network. His vaccine skepticism and increasingly conservative views make his candidacy more of a wild card as the two major parties eye his campaign.
Cornel West campaigns in battleground Michigan, a state Biden won in 2020 but where his low approval rating puts him in danger
“I think No Labels will probably hinder Biden – significantly more,” he told DailyMail.com.
But he bristles at accusations of spoilage, saying Democrats sometimes overemphasize this factor. “There’s a long history of Democrats worrying about what third-party candidates are going to do,” he said, although many effective third-party actions have come from the left.
Manchin is preparing a bus tour for February, and the sensitivity of wealthy West Virginians raises the possibility he will face Biden on rusty battlegrounds that were crucial to his 2020 victory.
“For every three points he takes from Biden, he takes one from us,” the Trump adviser said, citing internal and external polls.
Jim Messina, who helped Barack Obama’s successful re-election in 2012, raised the alarm about No Lables in a Politico column.
“From all the data I see, the practical effect of letting No Labels run a campaign is that Trump would win,” he wrote. Then he drove the point home. “Any well-funded third-party candidate would be a disaster for our republic – and risk putting us on a direct path to dictatorship,” he concluded.
Two left-wing candidates, progressive activist Cornel West and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, are outnumbering Biden by a 5-2 margin, according to the Trump camp.
Neither is high in the polls. But like other third-party candidates, they could make their presence felt in the battleground states, according to the Trump camp.
JL Partners surveyed 984 likely voters across the country about their 2024 voting intentions. Compared to 2020, the results show that Joe Biden has lost more support than Donald Trump
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. left the Democratic primary to campaign as an independent. So far, he’s taking in about two percentage points of Trump’s 2020 vote
Former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein received 1.5 million votes in 2016 and is running again
“From all the data I see, the practical effect of letting No Labels run a campaign is that Trump would win,” Barack Obama 2021 campaign manager Jim Messina wrote in an op-ed.
West has given indications that he plans to focus heavily on battleground Michigan, where Biden is already suffering from declining support from young voters and African-American voters, and where a sizable Arab-American population lives amid doubts about his handling of Israel’s war against Hamas.
West, like Biden, visited the state during the UAW strike and is planning a return trip early this year.
West told DailyMail.com that his campaign is targeting young people – who were a key part of Biden’s 2020 winning coalition.
‘Part of what this campaign is about is to convince young people that there are examples of individuals who are concerned about public life having moral and spiritual greatness rather than just upward mobility, and to really see it in action,” he said. at a recent Christian Science Monitor breakfast.
Stein presents her own set of challenges. She won 1.5 million votes in 2016, when Democrat Hillary Clinton was on the ballot.
Clinton and former Bill Clinton strategist James Carville have each named her as a Russian asset because of her past interactions in Moscow involving Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Clinton defeated Trump in the popular vote but was defeated in the Electoral College, and a shift of votes from her to Clinton in several battlegrounds would have flipped the outcome.
Stein’s online posts gave an indication of how she is prepared to take on the incumbent. “The Democrats have been playing dirty politics for as long as I can remember,” she said, bringing up the marginalization of abolitionist movements in the 19th century.
Stein’s chair next to Kremlin mouthpiece Dmitry Peskov at the head table with Putin at a infamous dinner from 2015 in Moscow gives her some political baggage amid the Russian war against Ukraine.
“Where do these races really matter to become the battlegrounds where they really, really, really match up in the swing states,” the independent runs official said.
Even amid the potential chaos, independent and third-party candidates face significant challenges, both in logistics and in attracting the “earned” media attention that drives modern campaigns.
Phillips made a dark joke after not a single New Hampshire voter showed up to his event, where he was willing to offer free coffee outside a DoubleTree hotel in subzero temperatures.
“If you build it, sometimes they don’t come,” he says said.