The race for the White House in 2024 is almost certainly a rematch between President Joe Biden and Mr. Donald Trump. (Photo: NBC)
When Democratic candidate Vice President Al Gore narrowly lost the 2000 presidential election to Joe Biden, a senator at the time vented his anger at one of the candidates. Representative Ralph Nader. With his leftist leanings, Nader won 97,488 more votes in Florida than Mr. Gore’s margin of 537 votes. “Ralph Nader caused us to lose the election.
A part of voters announced that they would not vote if Ralph Nader did not run, and the majority of them belonged to the group that supported Al Gore. Furthermore, the voting results were extremely close. If only 0.55% of Ralph Nader’s supporters in Florida vote for Al Gore, the result will be reversed. If Mr. Ralph Nader’s name did not appear on the ballot, Mr. Al Gore would almost certainly have become president.
The old scenario is likely to repeat itself
Nearly a quarter of a century later, Mr. Biden is the Democratic candidate in a race that is also likely to be fierce. With Nikki Haley, former President Donald Trump’s last opponent in the Republican primary, stopping her campaign, in fact, Mr. Trump has almost certainly received the nomination. Republican Party. That reality leads to a rematch between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump. However, several other candidates have also committed to running and are trying to gain a place on the ballot. With the narrow support for Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump in recent voter polls, it is very likely that these third-party candidates will push the election in some direction.
< p>Americans often say they are dissatisfied with today’s limited political options and want broader choices. According to a poll conducted by Ipsos in January this year, two-thirds of participants are tired of seeing the same candidates in the presidential election and want new ones. Similarly, only 1/4 of Americans are “satisfied” with the two-party system.
However, third-party candidates have never won a US presidential election . Republicans and Democrats have alternated control of the presidency since the Civil War. No third-party candidate has won a state since George Wallace won five Southern states with a platform. segregation at the height of the civil rights movement in 1968. Only two third-party candidates have won more than 5% of the national vote in the past 50 years John Anderson a Republican congressman won 6 6%. of the vote in 1980. Texas businessman Ross Perot won 19% of the vote in 1992 and 8 4% in 1996.
Even when third-party candidates could not win president they can still influence the outcome of the election. Their ability to influence depends on two variables beyond their votes: Whether they can draw strong voter support away from one major party and how close the race is between the two. Democratic and Republican parties.
This year the possibility of a third-party candidate causing an upset for the two main parties could happen for many reasons. At first, polls suggested the election would likely be close. The Economist‘s poll tracker shows Mr. Trump leading Mr. Biden by less than two percentage points, a margin within the margin of error. Monday many third-party candidates entered the race. The Green Party and the Liberal Party are both planning to select candidates. No Labels, a well-funded group that is trying to combat bipartisanship in American politics, also wants to choose a candidate. Cornel West, a left-wing academic, is running for office. And another independent candidate Robert Kennedy has a particularly high support rate of up to 18% in some recent polls.
Will Mr. Biden benefit more?
It is difficult to know whether Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump should be more worried. On the one hand, if other factors are equal, the presence of third parties in the race will benefit Mr. Biden as the weaker candidate. On the other hand, only 23% of voters participating in the Democratic primary were excited about Mr. Biden’s candidacy while 48% of Republican voters were excited about Mr. Trump according to a recent New York survey. Times and Siena College. The “half-heartedness” of Democratic voters may increase the possibility that Mr. Biden’s supporters will join the third party.
Furthermore, some third-party candidates reveal their ideology clearly left-leaning. Jill Stein, Green Party candidate in 2012 and 2016 (when she faced accusations of depriving candidate Hillary Clinton of victory) is running for re-election. Jill Stein’s campaign manager, Jason Call, emphasized that her goal is to become president but acknowledged that even winning 5% of the national vote would “be a big challenge.” The percentage of voters supporting Jill Stein is reaching about 2%. So is Mr. Corner West, a public intellectual and first-time candidate. He criticized President Biden as a militarist who is too soft on Israel and too close to American corporations, along with a series of other issues.
Both the campaign team of Mr. Corner West and Ms. Jill Stein all emphasized that if Mr. Trump wins the election, the fault will not lie with their candidate but with Mr. Biden. In other words, they believe that third-party candidates do not harm mainstream candidates, but on the contrary, unpopular mainstream candidates create opportunities for third parties. Furthermore, both candidates hope they will attract many new voters to the polls. About a third of those eligible to vote did not participate in the last election.
But it is quite clear that if Mr. West or Ms. Stein entered the race it would hurt the candidate of major bipartisanship, Mr. Biden is more likely to be influenced. The same may not be true of Mr. Kennedy whose charisma appears to be much greater. As the son of Robert Kennedy, the former attorney general and senator who was assassinated in 1968 while running for the Democratic nomination for president, he was loyal to the Democratic party. He initially ran himself in the Democratic primary but withdrew in October, explaining that he withdrew because the advantage was in Mr. Biden’s favor.
However, now Mr. Kennedy seems to be more popular with Republican voters: 61% of Republican voters have a favorable opinion of him compared to only 1/3 of Democratic voters. Last year they even invited him to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference, an important event on the Republican calendar. But that may simply be because he made things difficult for President Biden in the primaries. Some Trump supporters have attacked Robert Kennedy since he withdrew from the primary election.
No Labels is an unknown even more unpredictable than Robert Kennedy. They announced an “agenda” with 30 ideas aimed at attracting centrist voters. But it seems that No Labels is having difficulty finding candidates. Larry Hogan, the former Republican governor of Maryland, was a candidate, but he chose to run for the Senate. Joe Manchin who is retiring as a Democratic senator from West Virginia decided not to participate. Ms. Nikki Haley also made a similar decision.
Chris Christie, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, has expressed interest but may face difficulties in some states due to “loser” laws. ” under which candidates cannot run for president after they lose the primary election. No Labels seems to have a lot of money (since it’s not a political party, there’s no need to disclose donations) so it’s conceivable they could have some impact. But if they don’t have a candidate we can’t judge what the impact will be.
One way to check which major candidate is hurt by all the third parties is compare surveys that include only Trump and Biden with surveys that include third-party candidates. In surveys including only the two main candidates, Mr. Biden is 1.9 percentage points behind Mr. Trump. When third-party candidates appear on the survey this gap increases to 4.6 percentage points. If this effect continues, Mr. Biden will have difficulty winning the election.
However, poll results are often far from the actual election results. That rule is especially true for third-party candidates. Support for third-party candidates tends to decline in polls, or the actual number of votes they receive is lower than poll results, or both. For example, in 2016 11% of Americans told pollsters they would vote for a third-party candidate. Yet when they vote, only 6% of them actually do so.
This effect could be especially strong this year. Initially, dissatisfaction with the choice of Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump may cause voters to consider other candidates such as Mr. Robert Kennedy. However, when they vote, the feeling that the third-party candidate’s chances of winning are very low may lead them to choose one of the main candidates.
In five Economist/YouGov polls from At the end of January the average support for a common third-party candidate was only 5 7%. And unlike in 2016, support for a third-party candidate was low across all age groups, races, education levels, and gender. Voters may dislike both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, but their level of dislike for one candidate is much higher than the other. Therefore, they are willing to vote for the candidate that they have a lower level of “dislike” of the two candidates.
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