Third Party Candidate... Spoilers?

[Editorial]

There is talk about a third party from both sides of the aisle, will they be spoilers that gets Trump elected again? It is a scary outcome and one of the possible candidate has been a spoiler in the past.

OP-ED | Lieberman’s ‘No Labels’: Spoiler Or Just What the Doctor Ordered?

CT News Junkie

By Terry Cowgill

July 26, 2023

Why is it that, in the political realm, Americans are convinced that three is a crowd? A third (or fourth) candidate in an election featuring Democrats and Republicans is viewed as an interloper who runs off with votes that rightfully belong to the two major parties? As the hackneyed saying goes, “Only in America.”

As the presidential election season gets underway, we’re going through this tired exercise yet again. The two presumptive major-party nominees have abysmally low approval ratings and polls have consistently shown that a majority of voters wish someone else was running.

The low standing of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump – the presumptive nominees of their respective parties – has emboldened centrist politicians and their allies to strengthen a movement, known as “No Labels,” to produce a bipartisan “unity ticket.”

One of the movers and shakers behind No Labels is Connecticut’s own Joe Lieberman, the former U.S. senator who had his own experience running as an independent candidate. Lieberman is founding chairman of No Labels. Writing in the Wall Street Journal on Monday, Lieberman cited polls showing the common-sense concerns most Americans have – e.g. fiscal responsibility, public education, a fair and practical immigration policy – that have gone unaddressed by presidents of both parties:

The question is who will they draw their voters from… Republicans? Or Democrats? They could be the monkey wrench in the elections.

The curse of third-party presidential candidates

CNN Politics

By Zachary B. Wolf

July 17, 2023

The viable third-party presidential option is the fever dream of American politics.

But that won’t stop the Green Party or the Libertarians from fielding candidates every election year. And this year, the centrist group No Labels is trying to achieve ballot access for some kind of third-party unity candidate, although details are not yet entirely clear.

Yeah but… the  Green Party and the Libertarians were never really major players in national election, the real spoiler may be the “No Labels” that will attack the middle.

There’s been a Green Party and Libertarian candidate every presidential year in recent elections, but they rarely get more than 1% of the popular vote in presidential elections.

Note: Figures below come from The American Presidency Project’s list of presidential elections.

►The recent years in which these main alternative parties do relatively well – 2016 and 2000 – also happen to be years in which the winner of the Electoral College vote does not win the popular vote.

►The most successful third-party candidate many living Americans voted for might have been Ross Perot, who arguably spoiled the 1992 election for Republican President George H.W. Bush and allowed Bill Clinton, a Democrat, to win the White House with just 43% of the popular vote.

►In 1980, the Republican congressman John Anderson ran as an independent and more liberal candidate than Democratic President Jimmy Carter on many social issues, according to a New York Times obituary of Anderson.

That didn’t help Carter, already damaged by Sen. Edward Kennedy’s primary challenge. Anderson got more than 6% of the popular vote, although, like many third-party candidates, he polled much higher earlier in the campaign. Most voters tend to go home to their preferred party on Election Day.

►The last third-party candidate to actually win an Electoral College vote was George Wallace, who in 1968 won five Southern states and 46 Electoral College votes as a segregationist with the American Independent Party. That was the first election after civil rights legislation signaled a realignment of Southern White voters against Democrats.

►The sitting Democratic president in 1968, Lyndon Johnson, decided not to run that year. But you’ll notice that with the exception of 1996, when Perot ran again, all those years with third-party candidates who registered more than 2% in the popular vote – 1968, 1980, 1992, 2000 and 2016 – were years in which the party that controlled the White House lost it.

Conclusion: The evidence is that a strong third-party candidate is bad news for the sitting president.

The outlook is not that good…

The current third-party alternatives would seem to be more damaging to Biden

From the left, the academic Cornell West’s plan to seek the Green Party nomination should be taken seriously by Biden, according to CNN senior political commentator David Axelrod, who said on Twitter it was “risky business” for the Green Party after, he said, they helped tip the election to Trump in 2016.

From the middle, the group No Labels outlined a moderate agenda at a town hall in New Hampshire on Monday. Its leader, former Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, knows how it feels to have a victory spoiled. Many Democrats to this day feel that Ralph Nader’s 2000 Green Party run kept Al Gore out of the White House. Lieberman was Gore’s running mate.

Another moderate group, Third Way, has argued the No Labels unity ticket would hurt Biden more than Trump.

About a third of Republicans compared with 45% of Democrats said in a recent NBC News poll that they would consider a third-party candidate. If the coming election is like previous examples, small margins of voters in certain key states will hold the election in the balance, which means even a small portion of third-party votes could have a big impact.

No it does not bode well for the Democrats and I wouldn’t be surprised that these third party candidates goals are to be spoilers.

But it is not about the popular vote but just like the 2016 election it will all boil down to Electoral College votes.

The Electoral College is the big factor in a third-party nightmare for Democrats

Battleground states may actually be the least likely places for non-major party candidates to draw support.

Politico

By Steven Shepard

July 15, 2023

Democrats are rightly spooked by the prospect of credible third-party candidates this cycle.

Third-party candidates tend to get the most traction when there’s greater-than-usual dissatisfaction with the major party presidential candidates — like in 2016, when Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump had favorability ratings of just 43 percent and 38 percent, respectively.

If 2024 is a rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden, third-party candidates could get even more traction — with both holding nearly identical 39-percent favorable ratings, according to RealClearPolitics’ average.

This comes just as the bipartisan group No Labels is set to host Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and former Republican Utah Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman at an event in New Hampshire next week. And No Labels isn’t the only one: Academic Cornel West is jockeying for the Green Party nomination.

But there is one point of solace for Democrats: Voters in battleground states have been less likely to vote third party in recent elections than those in less competitive states.

I can just hope that voters will be so afraid of Trump get back in again to vote the Democrats. But…

According to a POLITICO analysis, none of the top 20 states for third-party voting in the past two presidential elections is broadly considered a swing state, and only three of the top 20 were states where the winning candidate’s margin in 2020 was within single digits: Minnesota (No. 11, Biden +7), Maine (No. 13, Biden +9) and Iowa (No. 19, Trump +8).

That doesn’t mean well-funded third-party candidates with significant or universal ballot access don’t pose a major threat to Biden. Analysis of way-too-early polling by FiveThirtyEight suggests that those third-party candidates currently draw more voters away from Biden than Trump.

I hope that Sen. Joe Manchin is scary enough to turn off voters.

I am not averse to third party candidates but I think they should build their party at the local and state level first. There is no way that a third party candidate is going to win the presidency. All they are going to do is be the spoiler.

[/Editorial]