2024 Third Party and Independent Candidate General discussion

[Vosem]

Assuming he actually makes it on a non-negligible number of ballots (and it's early enough that he can), then he is distinctly a more serious left-wing third-party spoiler than anyone who ran in 2020. Hard to say if he does better than Stein '16, but I think he's well-known enough that it's not out of the question.

[Vosem]

Biden should fear this because West will take some black votes.....in Atlanta, Detroit, Philly, Milwaukee this may be crucial

He’ll take about as many black votes as Kanye West did in 2020. He might take my vote though, just like Kanye did.

He has time to get on significantly more ballots than Kanye did, and my guess is that Kanye's treatment provides a lower floor on how seriously Cornel gets taken by the electorate.

(And that is a low floor indeed, to be sure.)

[Vosem]

Assuming he actually makes it on a non-negligible number of ballots (and it's early enough that he can), then he is distinctly a more serious left-wing third-party spoiler than anyone who ran in 2020. Hard to say if he does better than Stein '16, but I think he's well-known enough that it's not out of the question.

You think Howie Hawkins wasn't serious?

Here are the popular vote percentages for the top two left-wing third-party options by year, in my lifetime:
2020:
Hawkins 0.26%
La Riva 0.05%

2016:
Stein 1.06%
La Riva 0.05%

2012:
Stein 0.36%
Barr 0.05%

2008:
Nader 0.56%
McKinney 0.12%

2004:
Nader 0.38%
Cobb 0.10%

2000:
Nader 2.74%
Hagelin 0.08%

1996:
Nader 0.71%
Hagelin 0.12%

1992:
Fulani 0.07%
Hagelin 0.04%

...Hawkins was the weakest top left-wing third-party candidate since the 1992 cycle! I think if West really doesn't do any better than 0.26%, then either his ballot access operation really face-planted or Biden is the most popular President among left-wing Americans in my parents' lifetime.

(Which is possible, but I keep hearing that the reason for his low approval ratings is that there's disapproval from the left. If that is true, then this kind of campaign is obviously a threat. If it isn't -- and frankly I think the evidence is very lacking -- then this campaign is kind of a curiosity, but it also implies that Trump or DeSantis have pretty good odds of beating Biden.)

[Vosem]

Surely the 13th completely irrelevant leftist splinter group with negligible ballot access will make a huge impact, even though the first 12 didn't.

I think the argument is that West himself is well-known and therefore might get more votes than some activist nobody has ever heard of, not that the outfits that will promote him are particularly relevant. Nader's campaigns in 2004 and 2008 didn't really leave a trace in terms of organization, but they both at least did better than Hawkins 2020.

[Vosem]

Surely the 13th completely irrelevant leftist splinter group with negligible ballot access will make a huge impact, even though the first 12 didn't.

I think the argument is that West himself is well-known and therefore might get more votes than some activist nobody has ever heard of, not that the outfits that will promote him are particularly relevant. Nader's campaigns in 2004 and 2008 didn't really leave a trace in terms of organization, but they both at least did better than Hawkins 2020.

Is West really that well-known though? He seems a lot less present in media than he was 5-10 years ago, and the People's Party has always been somewhere between a vanity project by its founders and an irrelevant joke.

I think he's better-known than Howie Hawkins or Gloria La Riva (or actually, even Jill Stein before her campaigns); he's a frequent-ish guest on news podcasts and I see him asked to comment occasionally in news articles. I don't think he's that well-known overall, but the bar here is extremely low and he seems to pretty clearly meet it.

[Vosem]

With that, the biggest winner has got to be Richard Winger and BAN who have gotten the word out there that they exist.

I saw that he was stepping down from BAN, which isn't surprising, given how long he's been doing it, but I'm hoping that Redpath is able to keep things strong (and maybe combat some of the trolls that have taken to the comments section).

Definitely appreciate BAN - one of the few sites I check in on every day.

I don't check it every day but would like to echo it as an incredible resource.

Really curious what the Libertarians end up doing. America's oldest (don't bring up the Prohibition or Socialist Parties, they're irrelevant husks) and strongest third party pissing it all away in real time has been incredible to watch.

I wrote out an effort-post to respond to this, but it got eaten by the time limit. Currently, the most prominent name running is Jacob Hornberger, who also placed first in the 2020 Libertarian primaries (28%-20% against Jorgensen) and second in the balloting (53%-28% against Jorgensen); Hornberger is associated with the Mises Caucus, which took over the LNC at the 2022 convention (although I'm not sure if he has their endorsement for 2024, he had it in 2020) but he's not a particularly divisive figure and it's unlikely anyone would leave over him getting nominated who hasn't left already. (Four state parties disaffiliated over the Mises takeover; PA and NH actually have two rival Libertarian parties at the moment, both with ballot access. The Libertarians are actually sufficiently large that they really could split in half and have both halves maintain ballot access in most places.) It's very early days and the Libertarian Party distinctly has a taste for more notorious or famous candidates, so Hornberger is far from guaranteed to be the nominee, but he's the most prominent name running now.

In general, control over the Libertarian Party has oscillated before between 'surprisingly quite culturally right-wing' (1988/1992/2004) and 'not really all that culturally right-wing' (other years); the former takes control occasionally but the latter tends to win more often, because the former -- while it can usually command greater numbers in the electorate, actually -- tends to get distracted and joins the GOP or other right-wing parties. (Also, the latter is a political machine but very much also a subculture, in which at this point people have, like, grown up and married. It is more committed to the organization but less committed to the ideology than you'd expect and contains a number of, like, 'Christmas and Easter' libertarians.)

In general, as the electorate gets more libertarian, with both very extreme fiscal conservatism much more common than 20 years ago and once-fringe ideas like drug legalization becoming mainstream, I actually wonder if there just isn't room in America for two libertarian third-parties, one emphasizing the former and another the latter. Hornberger probably won't make anyone leave who hasn't already, but I wonder about an LNC nominating someone like Jeremy Kauffman making the Harry Browne people leave, or nominating someone like Vermin Supreme and making the Mises people leave.