Member Newsletter
Over the coming months we’re going to see a lot of articles about some secret plan Republicans have to totally undermine or destroy Democrats, like this one in the Times. These will all of course be pitched by Republicans eager to spread the word about their devious secret plans, pump up their partisans and demoralize Democrats. The one I’m flagging here has some of that. But it’s worth reading because it is what this campaign will almost inevitably come down to — third party candidates and whether Republicans will be able to elevate them enough to allow Donald Trump to win.
One thing we should expect is for all of the “major” third party candidates — Kennedy, Stein, West — to be funded in part by ultra-high-net-worth Republicans. That’s already happening to some degree.
From the Times:
Allies of Donald J. Trump are discussing ways to elevate third-party candidates in battleground states to divert votes away from President Biden, along with other covert tactics to diminish Democratic votes.
They plan to promote the independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a “champion for choice” to give voters for whom abortion is a top issue — and who also don’t like Mr. Biden — another option on the ballot, according to one person who is involved in the effort and who, like several others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the plans.
Trump allies also plan to amplify the progressive environmental records of Mr. Kennedy and the expected Green Party candidate, Jill Stein, in key states — contrasting their policies against the record-high oil production under Mr. Biden that has disappointed some climate activists.
One way to think about this is to consider the relative inelasticity of Trump’s voting coalition. In the 2016 and 2020 elections, Trump’s result was pretty similar. The difference was that in 2016, third party candidates pulled Hillary Clinton down to Trump’s level in the mid-40s. In 2020, that didn’t happen. Third party candidates got negligible results. And Biden won.
There are some parallels there with Biden’s recent modest but real advance in the polls. A lot of the shift has been Biden beginning to reassemble the partly fractured Democratic coalition, bringing back in waverers. That’s sort of like moving from the 2016 model to the 2020 model. Trump needs viable third party candidates to sop up those votes of disaffected Democrats and low-information voters. So keeping them viable is key. So you’ll certainly see each of those third party candidates soliciting and receiving lots of Republican money.
The good news is that none of this is lost on Democrats and they’ve been moving aggressively to knock down especially Robert F. Kennedy Jr. That’s unquestionably where the important knocking down is to be done. Kennedy’s issues are increasingly right wing almost across the board. But the Kennedy name is often getting him upwards of ten percent when his name is listed as an option. Making sure people know that he’s pushing vax denialism and QAnon-type conspiracy theories and that his own campaign sees his candidacy as a way to bring Trump back to the White House is super important. It’s more complicated with Jill Stein and Cornell West. They’re basically left-wing fringe candidates. So they have an inherent appeal to a very small but still potentially significant slice of the Democratic coalition. The argument there has to be that a vote for them is a vote for Trump.
In any case, this Times piece is worth reading because third party candidates have probably always been the key to the 2024 result.
One final point on this front. I’ve mentioned a few times that the numbers I follow are the head-to-head numbers with just Biden and Trump. The ones with more candidates are worth keeping an eye on too. But the results can be deceptive. Having a pollster list a candidate who many voters may not even have heard of has an inevitably distorting effect on the result. It essentially credentials that candidate as someone that the poll respondent should put on something like an equal level with the major party candidates. But in fact the final couple months of the race will overwhelmingly include messaging from the two candidates and the third party candidates, when they’re even on the ballot, will appear lower down from the major party candidates. So to have a realistic look at this question always keep in mind that you should take the topline results of the third party candidate polls with a grain of salt. But even tiny percentages can potentially turn the whole race.