2024 Spoiler Candidates? Not All Bad News for Biden
On November 5, 2024, Americans will head to the polls, faced with a presidential election that appears, at the surface level, a replay of the 2020 general election. President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump are slated for a rematch, each crowned as the nominees of their respective political parties. Despite their landslide nominations, the viability of both Biden and Trump as presidential candidates is in question. Both have, as of January 2024, lower approval ratings among the American public than when they faced off for the first time in the 2020 election, with Biden and Trump polling at just 41% and 42%, respectively. These underwhelming approval ratings show a great amount of discontent with the candidate nominees from the two major parties, which begs the question: do dissatisfied American voters have any feasible alternatives to choose from for a presidential ticket this election season?
Third-party presidential candidacies rarely excel in the United States due in large part to the nature of the American political system, where district-based, winner-take-all electoral procedures lack proportional representation and limit the power of third parties. Despite failing to win at the presidential level, third parties have had some small successes in modern American elections. The implications of even these modestly-successful third-party candidates can be important for election outcomes.
In 1992, Ross Perot won a surprising 20 percent of the popular vote, helping pave the way for Bill Clinton’s victory. Perot played the role of the election spoiler, or a candidate who splits votes with another similar candidate, in this case George H.W. Bush. More recently, in the 2016 election, third-party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein caused Hillary Clinton to lose by thin margins in many key battleground states, like Pennsylvania, Florida, and Michigan, that Donald Trump won that year.
The spoiler effect of third-party candidates could be a considerable factor in the 2024 presidential election, with multiple viable third-party candidates already having announced campaigns. The increase in popular third-party candidates differentiates this 2024 Biden versus Trump battle from the 2020 general election, where third-party candidates only gained 1.8% of the popular vote. In the 2024 election, third-party candidates are already generating far more buzz than in 2020, which is a byproduct of Americans’ growing disillusionment with the current major party candidates. The 2020 election was notable for its lack of significant vote share among third-party challengers, a fact driven by the deeply unpopular nature of Donald Trump and the small fraction of undecided voters, while in 2024, due to the electoral rematch, voters face attrition.
Multiple third-party candidates running in 2024 threaten to siphon votes away from Joe Biden and spoil his chances at winning a second term. These candidates are mainly positioning themselves on the far left of the American political spectrum, where they gain the votes of leftists who may otherwise vote for the more politically moderate Biden. Given Biden’s popularity among his fellow Democrats has tanked throughout his time in office, with just 23% of Democratic primary voters holding an enthusiastic view of him in the aftermath of Super Tuesday, he is in a somewhat vulnerable position. Some members of the dissatisfied Democratic electorate are likely to seek alternative options, like not turning out to vote or casting a ballot for a third-party candidate.
Of the leftist challengers to Joe Biden’s presidency, the most established and recognized is Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who ran in 2012 and 2016. As the Green Party candidate, she is likely to draw support from voters whose most pressing issue is climate change. Central to her campaign, Stein backs the Green New Deal, a slate of environmental legislation that would see large government investment into climate-focused infrastructure such as alternative fuel sources. In addition to her environmental record, Stein takes less interventionist stances on foreign policy, differentiating her from Biden. She is reluctant to support American allies at war such as Israel and Ukraine in hopes of winning over the faction of anti-interventionist voters, as well as to shift American budgets away from the military and toward her proposed environmental legislation. She harshly condemned Israel’s war efforts in a speech on March 7th in Dearborn Heights, one of a few Michigan cities with large Arab populations, aiming to court voters in a vital battleground state that are dissatisfied with Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war. Thus, despite the fact that she is polling at just 2% nationally, Stein has the chance to be a spoiler again in 2024.
Another, albeit lesser-known, leftist challenger is Cornel West, a Harvard University professor who is running in the presidential election as an independent. West promises to implement a broad range of economically leftist reforms and is even more isolationist on foreign policy than Stein. West vows to take extreme measures such as disbanding NATO and completely cutting off United States funding for Israel and Ukraine. Much like Stein, West has also courted support from Muslim communities in battleground states like Michigan and other leftist strongholds like California. However, being a fringe independent candidate means that, as of March 17, 2024, West only has gained ballot access in a small number of states, like Oregon and South Carolina. His exclusion from state ballots is a factor limiting his campaign and hindering his potential for success.
Though Jill Stein and Cornel West present left-wing competition for President Biden, Robert Kennedy Jr. stands out as the most recognizable and popular third-party candidate. Kennedy is an environmental lawyer and anti-vaccination activist who is backed in no small part by his name recognition. He has a syncretic political ideology that generally aligns more with Trump than Biden, so he is thought to pose a greater threat as a spoiler to Trump in the 2024 election. Kennedy has a net favorable rating among American voters and is especially popular among Republicans. Republicans have underestimated the threat that Kennedy’s campaign poses to Trump, as voters within the Republican party do not show uniform support for the former president. Kennedy can exploit this Republican divide, hoping to win over voters in the general election. If he attracts enough anti-Trump Republicans in a battleground state such as Georgia, that may help push Biden toward victory. Though he is currently slated to run as an independent candidate, Kennedy could potentially be backed by the Libertarian Party nomination. This nomination would grant him the support of the largest third-party in the U.S., which would come with geographically widespread ballot access, being a major boost to his candidacy.
With multiple viable third-party candidates on the ballot, such as Jill Stein, Cornel West, Robert Kennedy Jr., and potentially others, the 2024 general election is sure to be far more than a rematch of the 2020 election. While Joe Biden and Donald Trump are the major candidates facing off once again, and the winner will almost certainly be from one of the two major parties, they have never had to contend with such formidable third-party challenges as those present in 2024. This makes this election landscape different from 2020. Those who follow the campaigns should continue to monitor third-party polling and new candidacies to analyze how they will continue to impact Biden’s and Trump’s candidacies in unexpected ways.