Is a third-party candidate Trump's only hope?

Former President Donald Trump's legal troubles are piling up as he runs for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. He faces civil fraud charges in New York. He was found liable for sexual abuse and now faces a second defamation trial by his accuser, author E. Jean Carroll. The former president has been indicted by special counsel Jack Smith over his handling of classified documents, and this week said he expected Smith to indict him again in the Jan. 6 inquiry, this time for his efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.

Trump remains the overwhelming favorite to win the GOP nomination in an increasingly crowded field. But Trump has fallen behind President Biden in polls ahead of a likely general election rematch of their 2020 race. A new Quinnipiac University poll has Biden leading Trump by five percentage points. A new Morning Consult poll found that 43% of registered voters said they would back Biden in a head-to-head contest, with 42% supporting Trump. Another 10% said they would vote for someone else, and 5% were undecided.

But polls suggest that "someone else" could tip the race in Trump's favor. The centrist No Labels group this week said it would present a moderate candidate by Super Tuesday if Biden and Trump still appear to be the likely Democratic and Republican nominees by that point and the public supports a third alternative. And former Harvard and Princeton philosophy professor Cornel West, a leading Black intellectual, is running to be the Green Party's candidate. Political analysts say his and other potential longshot bids would siphon more votes from Biden than Trump. Will it take a third-party spoiler for Trump to win?

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Only a spoiler can save Trump

"If Trump has a chance of winning, the emergence of a viable third-party candidate is likely his only path to victory," said Merrill Matthews in The Hill. Both he and Biden are unpopular, but "without a viable third-party candidate, most voters would likely hold their nose and vote for Biden again." A No Labels candidate such as moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) would pull voters from Biden's right, and West would siphon away votes from Biden's left. That could be enough to tip the election to Trump, the same way libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein did in 2016 before victory was snatched from Hillary Clinton.

Democrats have good reason to be concerned, said Gail Collins in The New York Times. In a recent Quinnipiac poll, 47% of registered voters said they'd consider backing a third-party option. "That's a huge number," even if most are probably "just expressing their dissatisfaction" and would cast their ballots for someone with an actual chance of winning once they got to the voting booth. "Still, given the nutty way our electoral system is set up, a well-publicized third option might affect the results just enough in a few crucial states to change the outcome."

A third-party bid might not tip the Electoral College

It's true that a candidate outside the two main parties would "draw more voters away from Biden than Trump," according to the current polls, said Steven Shepard in Politico. "But the Electoral College — which has otherwise favored Republicans in the Trump era — could blunt those effects." Voters in battleground states have been more reluctant to back third-party candidates in recent elections than their counterparts in "less competitive states." So even if a Manchin or a West poaches votes from Biden in states where the winner was never in doubt, there's no guarantee the math will change enough in battleground states to flip the electoral votes Trump will need to win.

It's time to stop demonizing third-party candidates as spoilers or choices disgruntled citizens use to throw away their votes, said the Boston Herald in an editorial. "Democrats want whoever they think can beat Trump, and right now that person is President Biden," so the party faithful won't even consider somebody new like California Gov. Gavin Newsom or environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But sticking with the same old same old only solidifies the polarized party politics that "is doing great harm to the country" and keeping lawmakers from addressing the nation's problems. "We need real choice on election day, not a replay of old rivalries, nor candidates picked at national conventions on the basis of who will shore up party control for another four years, or wrest it back."