Democrats are signaling concerns about the chances of a third-party candidate jumping into the 2024 White House race, funneling votes from President Joe Biden and sending former President Donald Trump back to the executive mansion.
While swing states are always a top priority for presidential hopefuls, a recent analysis of battleground states’ voting trends points to a second reason Biden is relying on them this cycle. Voters are less likely to vote for a third-party candidate in recent elections than those in other states, according to an analysis from Politico. Third-party candidates have consistently underperformed in swing states, making those voters a prime 2024 target for the Biden campaign.
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None of the top 20 states where third-party candidates have performed best over the past two presidential elections is considered a swing state. Among those states, Minnesota, Maine, and Iowa had single-digit margins for the winning candidate in 2020.
Biden has been polling ahead of Trump in some of the most crucial swing states, with a recent poll out of Wisconsin from Marquette Law School showing the president ahead of Trump by nine points.
Regardless of Biden’s early polling numbers, the threat of a third-party candidate still looms. More Democrats than Republicans, on average, would consider a third-party presidential, according to an NBC News poll.
Amid talks of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W) making a third-party presidential bid in 2024, the bipartisan group No Labels snagged the senator to headline a New Hampshire event next week, fueling concerns among Democrats who don’t want any threats to Biden’s reflection.
No Labels has made it clear it won’t move forward with an alternative option unless the two major-party candidates are unpopular.
The group has said they are responding to concerns from voters about another match-up featuring Biden and Trump, and have shut down allegations of attempting to create a path for Trump to return to the White House
“For months, there has been a coordinated effort by partisan Democratic operatives and former never-Trump Republicans to subvert No Labels’ 2024 presidential insurance project, weaving a tale that an independent ticket could never win the presidency in 2024 and could only ‘spoil’ the election in favor of former President Trump,” a memo obtained exclusively by the Washington Examiner this week reads.
Cornel West, who announced he’s vying for the White House as a Green Party candidate last month, has sounded the alarm for Democrats on third-party candidates ahead of 2024.
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“This is not the time in order to experiment. This is not the time to play around on the margins,” DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison told former White House press secretary Jen Psaki last week.
An analysis from Third Way shows over the course of 27 elections from 1912 to 2020, third-party candidates did not rack up enough electoral votes in sum to win a single election.
