The Tough Sell of the Third-Party Candidate

Fear of handing the election to Donald Trump is making an outsider run radioactive.

Latest Apr 8, 2024 0 45 Add to Reading List

The Tough Sell of the Third-Party Candidate

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Third-party and independent candidates are never all that popular in American presidential elections. But this year, fear of handing the election to Donald Trump is making an outsider run radioactive.

First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

Outsider Attempts

The third-party presidential candidate is not a beloved figure in American life. Many of these contenders are ignored or mocked for their unrealistic ambitions—unless, in rare cases, they end up influencing a close race, at which point they are blamed for spoiling things for the major candidates.

This year, outsider candidates are trying their luck in a particularly high-stakes election—and facing major pushback from those who fear that a spoiler could hand the White House back to Donald Trump. That dynamic helped fuel the downfall of No Labels, a sincere and well-funded—though confusing and perhaps naive—attempt to get a centrist alternative on the presidential ballot. After months of courting various candidates (the list reportedly included Condoleezza Rice, Will Hurd, and Nikki Haley), collecting what it said in November of last year was $60 million in donations, and getting on 18 state ballots, the organization called it quits last week: It just couldn’t get a credible candidate to run on its ticket.

“Anyone who earnestly opposes Donald Trump—Democrat, Republican, independent, whatever—is terrified of participating in anything that will hasten Trump’s return to power,” my colleague John Hendrickson, who has covered No Labels, told me today. Even though No Labels itself insisted that its third-party bid would not be a spoiler in the race, John explained, many people saw it as just that.

A theoretical No Labels candidate sweeping the general election was never a realistic risk. Americans have never elected a third-party candidate—in part because such politicians don’t have the combination of fundraising machinery and party backing that Republicans and Democrats do, John told me. He explained that third-party candidates can also have a hard time getting on the ballot in various states, which have their own laws determined by politicians who are overwhelmingly members of either party. “We often think of presidential elections as ‘national’ elections, but the reality is that ballots are administered by states,” John said.

Still, there’s just enough precedent for “spoiler” candidates changing the game at the last minute to give pause to those who do not want Trump back in the White House. These candidates have siphoned votes in a few close races in the past—notably in the 2000 election when Ralph Nader nabbed about 97,000 votes in Florida, where Democratic candidate Al Gore lost by about 500 votes, and in 2016, when Jill Stein garnered some that could have gone toward Hillary Clinton. (Both candidates ran for the Green Party, so were likely more attractive to liberal voters or those who voted for Democrats.)

Many voters are unenthused—even distraught—about the major-party candidates on offer in this election. These negative feelings could inject real volatility into the race. My colleague Elaine Godfrey, who published an article this morning about a group of undecided women voters in the electorally vital suburbs of Philadelphia, found that some—appalled by Trump, wary of Joe Biden’s age—were casting about for other options. A few of them were checking out Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the former Democrat and conspiracy-minded political scion who has shown surprising momentum in his outsider bid.

RFK Jr.’s “We the People” Party is present only on the Utah ballot so far, but he is currently polling around 12 percent—well below either of the major-party candidates, but a number that distinguishes him as the highest-polling independent candidate since Ross Perot ran in 1992 (in what was then the most successful outsider bid in many decades). As John wrote of RFK Jr. last month: “His movement’s potential to ‘spoil’ the election remains very real.” He just announced his vice-presidential pick as Nicole Shanahan, a wealthy Silicon Valley lawyer who was until recently married to a Google co-founder, whom he selected from a bucket of contenders that reportedly included Aaron Rodgers, Tulsi Gabbard, and Killer Mike; Shanahan’s wealth and age (she is 38) could help RFK Jr. bring in new voters.

Some of the women Elaine interviewed did seem to think that RFK Jr. has a real shot at winning. But other Americans, as Jon Krosnick, a political-science professor at Stanford University, told me last fall, vote for an outside candidate not because they think that person has a chance but because they will feel better about themselves if they choose that person. Krosnick’s point is a reminder that voting is not only a political act—it is emotional, social, and deeply human.

Related:

Today’s News

A total solar eclipse emerged along Mexico’s western coast and finished its path across continental North America in Newfoundland, Canada.
In a new video, Donald Trump said he would leave the issue of abortion rights up to states’ discretion.
President Biden outlined his plans to lower or cancel student-loan debt for more than 30 million Americans.

Dispatches

The Wonder Reader: Isabel Fattal collects some of our writers’ journeys into new communities, ways of thinking, and ways of being.

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Evening Read

Picture of Alex Garland — Photograph by Stephen Ross Goldstein for The Atlantic

Civil War Was Made in Anger

By David Sims

When the first trailer for Alex Garland’s new movie, Civil War—a harrowing depiction of conflict between American states in the near future—was revealed, a wave of bafflement spread across the internet. Incredulous articles questioned the conditions that would lead Texas and California to become allies against “loyalist states,” as was written on a promotional map. Others wondered how the film could dare to depict such conflict without really explaining its origins, given that Civil War takes place well into its titular war, with rebel forces descending on the White House to evict a president (played by Nick Offerman) who has refused to leave office.
This reaction only justified Garland’s reasons for making Civil War—not merely as a gnarly war drama, he told me in a recent interview, but as an argument against political polarization: “I find it interesting that people would say, ‘These two states could never be together under any circumstances.’ Under any circumstances? Any? Are you sure?”

Read the full article.