Biden stands to lose more from third-party candidates than Trump

Third-party candidates are emerging as a potentially crucial obstacle to reassembling Joe Biden’s winning 2020 election coalition, particularly younger voters, in the battleground states likely to decide the U.S. presidency.

Interest in independent candidates such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the offspring of a celebrated Democratic political dynasty, and possibly moderate West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, who is considering a run, is the highest in at least 20 years, according to a Gallup Poll.

That appeal is strongest among key Democratic constituencies such as the young, union households and urban residents, according to a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll of registered voters in seven swing states.

Overall, Biden 2020 voters are more drawn to third-party alternatives while more of Donald Trump’s 2020 supporters stand by their man: 16% say they would vote for Kennedy or another independent candidate compared to 11% of Trump 2020 supporters, according to the swing-state poll, conducted Nov. 27 to Dec. 6.

The question presented a scenario in which Biden and Trump are the major-party nominees while Kennedy, Cornel West and the Green Party’s Jill Stein also run for the presidency, all of whom have announced bids.

The same poll showed the Biden coalition’s openness to an alternative outside the two major political parties is even greater: 41% said they are very or somewhat likely to consider such a candidate next year versus 35% of Trump 2020 voters.

That amounts to a serious threat to Biden’s reelection bid, said Sarah Longwell, an anti-Trump Republican political strategist who has been conducting weekly focus groups with voters.

Independent candidates “can do tremendous damage by peeling off core, small margins” Longwell said. “This is an election that’s going to be decided by small margins.”

The addition of a nominee running on behalf of the No Labels centrist group, a choice that wasn’t offered in the Bloomberg poll but is a possibility that organization is considering, would further hinder a Biden reelection, she said.

“People for whom a third party is appealing are the sort of soft GOP voters, the right-leaning independents, who made up the margins for Joe Biden,” Longwell said.

Manchin, who separated from the Democratic Party and decided not to seek reelection to his Senate seat, is involved with No Labels. The group is laying the groundwork for a possible third-party campaign and Manchin is set to go on a cross-country tour to listen to Americans’ concerns, a way that presidential hopefuls often explore a run.

Running without major-party backing presents serious obstacles for a candidate, including collecting enough signatures to get on a state ballot.

Still, independent campaigns may have influenced the outcome of recent presidential elections.

In 2016, Green Party nominee Stein’s vote total exceeded Trump’s margin of victory in the battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — three states that together would have swung the election to Democrat Hillary Clinton if she won them.

In 2000, independent Ralph Nader’s vote in Florida and New Hampshire was larger than the victory margins of George W. Bush in both states. Bush won that election only after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling secured his victory in Florida.

Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who worked on Biden’s 2020 campaign, said there is “no question” that third-party campaigns could play a decisive role in delivering a Trump victory next year. But she said support for third-party candidates is often overstated and just a way for voters to express dissatisfaction.

“When it becomes clear that it’s a Trump and Biden contest,” Lake said, “that helps consolidate a lot of the third-party vote back to Joe Biden. But he has to lay the groundwork, as he is.”

Younger voters, who overwhelmingly backed Biden in the last election, are especially drawn to alternative candidates, with 51% of under-35-year-olds and 47% of 35- to 44-year-olds saying they are likely to consider such a candidate this year, according to the Bloomberg swing-state poll. Union households, LGBTQ voters and urban residents — all groups Biden did well with in his last election — also express outsize interest.

A plurality of swing-state Generation Z voters — those born in 1997 or later — say Biden is not doing enough to address the burden of student loan payments, even after he has erased $127 billion in such debt in initiatives that are widely thought to be aimed at locking in that key demographic.

Those voters are especially amenable to independent candidates but also fertile ground for a targeted Biden campaign to win them back, Lake said.

Young Americans “are very Democratic in their policy preferences, but they’re not necessarily that attached to the Democratic candidate,” she said.

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(With assistance from Gregory Korte.)

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