Democrats are trying to prevent third-party candidates from getting on the ballot in battleground states next year due to concern that such campaigns would make it easier for Donald Trump to win the presidency, NBC News reported on Tuesday.
About 6% of all voters cast ballots for third-party and write-in candidates in 2016, when Trump won, but only 2% did so in 2020, when he lost.
"There is no doubt at all that [third-party candidates Jill] Stein and [Gary] Johnson cost [Hillary] Clinton the election in 2016, and a credible third-party vote could do the same to Biden in 2024," said Matt Bennett, the executive vice president of public affairs at Third Way, a centrist Democrat group opposing attempts by No Labels to enter next year's presidential race.
No Labels is a bipartisan political organization that supports centrist policies.
The drop in the proportion of third-party votes in 2020 changed the threshold the major candidates needed to reach to capture key battleground states — from 47% and 48% in 2016 to 49% and 50% in 2020, with Trump being edged out in such states three years ago, NBC News noted.
According to the 2020 NBC News Exit Poll, 5% of national voters said they chose third-party candidates in 2016, and those voters in 2020 backed Joe Biden by a 2-to-1 ratio, which, in close battleground states, is what made the difference in defeating Trump.
But the well-financed No Labels and other third-party groups say there must be more choices for voters, especially when surveys indicate that large majorities don't want either Biden or Trump to run.
No Labels insists a third-party candidate could win, pointing to a poll the group commissioned in March showing that 59% of registered voters nationwide said they would consider voting for a moderate independent candidate if the choices were Biden and Trump, including more than half of Democrats and Republicans, as well as 7 in 10 independents.
In addition, an unnamed moderate independent candidate received backing from 20% of all voters, compared with 33% for Trump and 28% for Biden.
No Labels also rejects concerns that its third-party bid would take more votes away from Democrats, saying polling showed an equal share of Democrats and Republicans backing an unnamed moderate independent candidate over Biden and Trump.
The group also contends that Democrat efforts to keep it off the ballot is hypocritical, with No Labels chief strategist Ryan Clancy saying Democrats can't portray themselves as "protectors of democracy" while limiting the choices to two parties.
Democrats opposed to No Labels say a third-party candidate has no chance of winning in 2024, with an opinion article in The Washington Post stating that "no third-party candidate has ever come remotely close to winning, including Theodore Roosevelt, running on a Progressive Party ticket just four years after leaving office as an enormously popular Republican president."
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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