In the American presidential election of 2024, there will be more presidential candidates on the ballot than there are major political parties.

Future competitors?

The latest to throw their proverbial hat into the ring is West Virginia Senator John Manchin, who announced his retirement and stated that he is open to a run for the presidency. He’ll presumably stand as the nominee of No Labels, a centrist grouping that denounces the extremes of left and right.

If he does run, Manchin will face not only Joe Biden, the Democratic incumbent, and perhaps Donald Trump, seeking to regain the White House, but also the left-wing candidacies of Jill Stein and Cornel West, and the bid for the presidency of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

The dissatisfaction of American voters with the two-party duopoly is not new, but it is growing. According to Pew Research, 45 per cent of Americans in 2022 called themselves independents rather than Democrats or Republicans, tied at 28 per cent in self-identification. Independents themselves share little in common, other than alienation from the mainstream parties.

What explains the persistence of two national parties in a country in which nearly half of the population dislikes both? Like the UK, the US uses winner-take-all plurality or “first-past-the-post” voting, which tends to disfavour third and fourth parties. If the US, like many other democracies, used a system of proportional representation (PR), the present Democratic and Republican coalitions would almost certainly dissolve in favour of a multiparty system.

What would the new parties in a multiparty America be? In 2021 Pew broke the American electorate into nine groups, with names like Faith and Flag Conservatives, the Populist Right, and the Outsider Left.

Under proportional representation, a handful of significant parties would be more likely than many tiny ones. The Republican Party would split into a Trumpy populist nationalist party, and a libertarian party aligned with big business and in free of abortion, gay rights, free trade and mass immigration. There might also be a smaller religious right party, dominated by evangelical Protestants.

For its part, the Democratic Party might fission into three groups – socially-left but fiscally conservative neoliberals, some of whom might join the new post-Republican libertarian party; a social democratic faction, identified with organised labour, attracting many of today’s working-class black and Hispanic voters, as well as some white former Republicans; and a radical left party, based in universities, nonprofits, and the civil service.

In a multiparty America, shifting coalitions rather than trench warfare might be the rule. For example, the populist party might collaborate on some pro-family and pro-labour issues with the center-left social democrats. America’s existing two-party system did not prevent Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist Senator from Vermont, from joining with Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, a populist conservative, to introduce a measure supporting striking members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union.

If proportional representation were adopted for elections to Congress and state legislatures, in the US the president would continue to be elected by plurality voting (or by another proposed reform, ranked choice voting). Even so, a multiparty system would motivate American presidents to appoint members of parties other than their own in their cabinets, to increase their legitimacy or reward other parties for support on particular issues.

For the foreseeable future, however, America’s multi-party electorate will continue to be locked in the straitjacket of the two-party system encouraged by first-past-the-post plurality voting. The defenders of the two parties will warn voters that if they vote for third-party or independent candidates they will waste their vote – or, even worse, help to elect the major-party candidate they like the least.

And the warnings will be correct. In a plurality voting system, the danger that third-party and independent candidates will be “spoilers” is real. Many Democrats blame Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate in 2016, for siphoning away enough votes from Democrat Hillary Clinton to permit Donald Trump to win the electoral college and thus the presidency, even as he lost the popular vote. Ralph Nader’s presidential run is also sometimes blamed by Democrats for throwing the electoral college, and thus the election, to the Republican George W. Bush in 2000.

But political strategising has its limits. If voters really despise both of the mainstream options, persuading them to hold their noses and pick one of them as “the lesser evil” may not work. Voting is about expressing personal values and opinions, not just determining who gets committee seats or cabinet appointments. For that reason, a vote for a protest candidate who has no chance of winning may still make sense to some voters who have no other way to send a message to the political elite.

Sometimes parties do get the message and reform their policies, in the hope of luring the protest voters back into the fold.  On social issues and environmentalism, though not necessarily on other issues, Biden in his campaign and as president has been well to the left of Hillary Clinton in 2016 – perhaps out of sincere conviction, but possibly to keep large numbers of progressives from abandoning Biden for a more left-wing candidate in 2024.  After Ross Perot won 19 per cent of the popular vote in 1992, more than any third-party candidate since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, the Democrats under Clinton and the Republicans in Congress both signaled their commitment to fiscal deficit reduction, a major theme of Perot’s campaign.

Whatever happens in 2024, we can expect more rebellions against America’s two-party cartel in the years ahead, now that Democrats and Republicans can each claim only a quarter of Americans as reliable partisans. And when combined with America’s electoral college system of electing the president and its winner-take-all plurality voting rules, third-party and independent candidacies can produce dramatic and unpredictable effects.

Senate Democrats warn Manchin that running for president would risk disaster.

Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) flirtation with a third-party presidential bid after announcing his upcoming retirement from the Senate is sparking anxiety among Democratic senators who warn that Manchin would make a big mistake if he challenges President Biden.

Democratic lawmakers say that if Manchin runs for president as an independent, it will hurt Biden’s reelection chances and could result in what they view as the nightmare scenario of electing Donald Trump to a second White House term.

Democratic senators were less concerned about a potential Manchin presidential run a few months ago, when they thought he was still likely to run for another Senate term.

Since then, Biden’s polling numbers have gotten worse in a hypothetical head-to-head match-up with Trump, who faces 91 felony charges, and Manchin has announced he will retire from the Senate after next year.

“I think it would be very, very unfortunate if Joe Manchin decided to do that,” Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) said of a possible Manchin presidential run.

“I know he’s a supporter of President Biden and has been an important person here in the U.S. Senate in terms of getting things done. And he knows that if he were to step in [to the race] that it would make it much more likely Donald Trump would be president again, and I know Joe Manchin doesn’t want that,” Stabenow said.

Manchin, however, last week didn’t rule out the possibility of running for president on the No Labels ticket or another independent platform, telling CBS News that he has “plenty of time” to make a decision.

And he rejected fears voiced by other Democrats that he would sink Biden’s reelection if he throws his hat into the ring.

“I don’t buy that scenario,” Manchin told CBS’s Norah O’Donnell. “I’ve heard that. And — and I wouldn’t buy that scenario, because if you look back in history, how things have played out, I don’t think that they thought Ross Perot would elect Bill Clinton,” referring to three-way presidential election race in 1992.

Manchin told NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker that he would “absolutely” consider a run for president.

“I will do anything I can to help my country,” he said.

Manchin has argued during much of Biden’s presidency that national politics have become too polarized and that millions of voters in the middle of the ideological spectrum don’t have enough of a voice in Washington.

“I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure, to mobilize that moderate, sensible, common-sense middle,” he pledged.

Jonathan Kott, a Democratic strategist and former Manchin adviser, said the senator’s musings about running for president should be taken seriously.

“I always take Joe Manchin at his word. I think the first thing he’s going to do is go around the country, see if he can mobilize what he thinks is a moderate majority of voters, people who want their government to get stuff done and not the people who focus on the fighting of the extremes of each party,” he said.

Kott said Manchin is “going to spend time talking to voters to see if there’s an appetite” for his brand of centrism.

Manchin’s recent statements have Democratic colleagues jittery that he could indeed decide to challenge Biden, even though they and most political experts say the West Virginia senator wouldn’t have any realistic chance of winning the presidency himself.

“My reaction is disappointment, deep disappointment,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). “At his core, I think Joe Manchin is a Democrat and believes in Democratic values and principles. I’m deeply disappointed that he is still even talking about a possible run that would undermine Joe Biden.

“The simple stark fact is that a Manchin run for president would undercut Joe Biden,” he said.

Blumenthal warned that a second Trump term would be a catastrophe for the country.

“The prospect of a Donald Trump presidency is more frightening to me than any other political event in my lifetime. I think it’s a real prospect of the United States turning its back on democracy if he is elected president,” he said.

Manchin has increasingly voiced his frustrations with Biden over the past year-and-a-half and pointedly declined to endorse him for a second term.

“If Joe Biden runs again and he is the Democratic nominee, depending on who the Republican nominee is, we will just have to wait and see,” he told Chris Cuomo on NewsNation’s “CUOMO.”

Manchin earlier this year accused Biden of showing a “deficiency of leadership” for letting more than two months pass between meetings with then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) while the nation was facing a potential default because of the expiration of the debt limit.

Some Democratic strategists argue Manchin could pull votes away from Trump in a three-way race, but they acknowledge the 2024 presidential race will be so close that it’s hard to predict the outcome.

“He could swing that race in one direction or the other,” said Steve Jarding, a strategist who has worked for various Democratic senators with presidential ambitions.

Jarding noted that one major difference between 2024 and 1992, the last time a third-party presidential candidate had a major impact on a race for the White House, is that this year’s leading candidates, Biden and Trump, are both highly unpopular.

“If there’s a significant portion of Americans that were either going to stay home … or want to take their frustration out, [Manchin] could get votes,” he said.

But he predicted Manchin won’t win a single electoral vote, just as Perot failed to do 30 years ago.

“He comes from a small state. He’ll get exposed,” he said, explaining that if Manchin gains traction in the race, he’ll face an barrage of investigations and negative advertising that will dig into his personal business dealings.

“When either Trump or Biden see he’s hurting them more than the other side, they’ll take him down; they’ll go after him,” Jarding said.

“And it’s hard running in a third party. It’s hard to get on the ballot, it’s hard to get traction, because nobody thinks he can win,” he added. “He would face very strong headwinds, so I don’t see how he could even come close to winning a state.

“He easily could hurt Biden more than Trump, but because both [Biden and Trump] are so disliked by a significant portion of the voting population, I’m not sure of that,” he said.

Jill Stein formally launches 2024 White House bid as Green party candidate.

A new front opened in the growing threats to Joe Biden’s presidency on Tuesday when the left-wing environmentalist Jill Stein formally launched her third presidential bid in an online conversation with two fellow progressive activists.

Stein, 73, who is bidding to become the US Green party’s nominee, is the latest in a series of mostly leftist figures to announce candidacies with the potential to erode Biden’s core support in an expected re-match against Donald Trump in next year’s poll.

Having previously announced her candidacy with a video posted on X, formerly Twitter, she gave added substance to her campaign in a live Zoom conversation with Chris Smalls, a US trade union organiser for Amazon workers, and Miko Peled, an Israeli-born pro-Palestinian activist.

“This is all about our community rising up for our higher values,” Stein said. “This is a totally unprecedented political moment.”

The choice of protagonists appeared designed to signal key themes in Stein’s candidacy – workers’ rights, high living costs, and US support for Israel, all issues where Biden is showing vulnerability among his voter base.

“On all these issues, we’re in the target hairs,” Stein said. “We need to start building an America that works for all of us and that includes a living working wage … a Green New Deal … an economic bill of rights. We can end endless wars which don’t solve anything.”

Stein’s entry into the race has special resonance because of her supposedly decisive role in tipping battleground states to Trump in his 2016 presidential election victory over Hillary Clinton.

While winning just 1.4m votes nationwide, Stein won more votes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan than Trump’s narrow victory margins, prompting many analysts to conclude that her presence on the ballot was decisive in drawing progressive voters away from Clinton.

Stein also stood as the Green’s candidate in the 2012 election, when she won just over 400,000 votes nationally and was not thought to have played a decisive role in President Barack Obama’s victory over the Republican, Mitt Romney.

Her attempt to earn the Green’s nomination in 2024 follows the decision last month by the party’s original likely nominee, Cornel West, to leave the party and run as an independent.

Both figures join a growing field of purported third party or independent candidates amid growing signs of voter dissatisfaction at the prospect of a repeat of the 2020 presidential race between Biden and Trump.

With the exception of Robert F Kennedy Jr – son of the late attorney general, whose anti-vaccine stance is thought to be attractive to voters on the right – most non-mainstream candidates are thought to pose a greater threat to Biden than Trump, who is far ahead of other candidates to win the Republican nomination.

Biden, who turned 81 this week, faces growing concerns over his age – even though he is just four years older than Trump – and rumbling economic discontent. A recent poll showed Biden trailing his predecessor in five out of six battleground states that he won in 2020.

The president’s path to re-election could become more complicated still if Joe Manchin, a Democratic senator for West Virginia, decides to run as an independent centrist candidate after announcing last week that he would not seek re-election to the Senate.

Manchin has fueled speculation about a presidential run after announcing plans to travel the country to explore the possibility of “creating a movement to mobilise the middle”.

Biden also faces a primary challenge from within his own party in the shape of the Democratic congressman Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who has announced that he will run against the president.

Stein, who is Jewish, has attacked Biden’s unstinting support for Israel in its response to the 7 October attacks by Hamas that killed more than 1,400 people. She has called for a ceasefire to the Israeli military offensive in Gaza, a stance that could potentially gain her support in Michigan, a battleground state containing many ethnic Arab voters who have become disenchanted with Biden’s pro-Israel posture.

In an interview with Newsweek, she warned that Biden’s support for Israel risked nuclear war. She also called Israel an “apartheid state” and said it was committing “genocide” in Gaza, where more than 13,000 Palestinians have been killed since the country launched its military assault in retaliation for Hamas’s attack.

In her campaign video, launched on 9 November, Stein, a medical doctor, called both the Democratic and Republican parties “a threat to our democracy”.

“People are tired of being thrown under the bus by wealthy elites and their bought politicians,” she said. “The political system is broken. We need a party that serves the people. I’m running for president to offer that choice for the people.”

Senate Democratic campaign chairman seeks to defy odds amid Manchin retirement and sets sights on Cruz and Scott.

Sen. Gary Peters already had what seemed like an impossible task: Holding Democrats’ razor-thin Senate majority while defending twice as many incumbents as Republicans – all with limited pick-up opportunities and with two Democrats at risk in states former President Donald Trump won in 2020.

Then, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin announced he wouldn’t run for reelection. And now West Virginia is off the table – a reality the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee acknowledges as he adjusts his plans for a shifting landscape.

“West Virginia is a very tough state,” Peters, a Michigan Democrat running the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm for a second straight cycle, told CNN on “Inside Politics Sunday.” “Joe Manchin had the ability to win there because of his long career and the brand that he built. But we are focused on other states that also have those kinds of incumbents running for reelection.”

Peters’ new goal: Holding every other Democratic incumbent – including in red states like Montana and Ohio – and clinging to a 50-50 Senate with the hope that President Joe Biden wins reelection and gives them control of the chamber. And Peters says his party will try to pull off another difficult feat: defeating Republican incumbent Sens. Ted Cruz and Rick Scott, even as Democrats have long struggled to win statewide in both Texas and Florida.

Despite the odds, Peters said Democrats can defy expectations, pointing to the fact that incumbents are typically difficult to beat; the potency of abortion rights as an issue; and some messy GOP primaries that could end up hurting Republicans next November.

‘They’re not strong in their states’

But to do that, Democrats have virtually no margin for error next fall. Peters said they hope to go on the offensive in Texas and Florida, noting that Democratic donors in particular are eager to knock off the two GOP incumbents there.

“They’re not strong in their states,” Peters said of Cruz and Scott. “We’re going to have a very strong challenger coming out of the primaries of those two states. And we’ll be able to raise resources. Certainly donors around the country have very strong opinions about those two individuals. And we believe we’ll have the resources to make the kind of contrast necessary to win those states.”

But running competitive races in mega-states like Texas and Florida would drain precious resources — and it’s too early to know how much money national Democrats would dump into those GOP-leaning states. Scott, running for a second term in a state that has increasingly trended Republican, also has a vast personal fortune he could dip into.

“I wouldn’t want to run against me,” Scott told CNN.

Cruz’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment, but the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Steve Daines, said that national Republicans are keeping an eye on Cruz.

“Just because he’s Ted Cruz he’ll draw a lot of money from the other side to try to defeat Ted Cruz,” Daines told CNN in a recent interview.

Steep challenges

The daunting map – with Democrats defending 23 seats and Republicans just 11 – includes Democratic seats from several purple states like Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

They will have to defend two states that will draw the most amount of attention: Ohio and Montana, where Trump easily won in his first two White House runs and where Democratic Sens. Sherrod Brown and Jon Tester face what could be the toughest races of their careers.

Added to their challenges: Biden’s unpopularity – particularly in red states – and real concerns among Democrats that he is losing support from key parts of his coalition that helped power his 2020 White House run.

But Tester is not too concerned.

“I don’t think it makes much difference,” Tester said of Biden on top of the ticket. “We haven’t had a popular Democratic president since LBJ.”

Yet Democrats will likely have to run ahead of Biden and pick up voters who would vote for Trump if he’s at the top of the ticket. Peters is fully aware of the challenges ahead for Montana and Ohio, but argued that Brown and Tester have “distinct brands” that will help them “outrun the Democratic ticket” in those states.

“The states that we’re competing in are traditionally battleground states for both the president as well as for the Senate so we have to run very good races and campaigns in those areas – and those places like Montana and Ohio that are clearly going to be very challenging,” Peters said.

And for others in swing states, campaigning with Biden may be their only choice.

“No,” Sen. Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat, told CNN when asked if he thought Biden would drag him down in his race against Republican Dave McCormick, who lost in the GOP primary last cycle but so far has a clear field next year.

Asked if he would campaign with Biden, Casey said he would and already has.

“We’re gonna be on the ticket together. … I’ve got a damn good record on delivering for the state” even as he acknowledged McCormick is “tough … I’ll leave it at that for now.”

‘Very contentious’ GOP primaries

But Peters hopes that Republicans will undermine their chances in 2024 in their bruising primaries as they’ve done in past cycles – namely 2022, 2012 and 2010 – all of which saw weak GOP nominees collapse in the general election and effectively hand Democrats the majority.

Republicans are concerned that could happen in Michigan – a prime pickup opportunity with Democrat Debbie Stabenow retiring – as well as Montana, if hard-right Rep. Matt Rosendale runs against the NRSC’s preferred candidate, Tim Sheehy. In Ohio, Republicans are battling in a crowded primary, but NRSC officials maintain that they would be comfortable with whomever emerges as the nominee there.

“A lot of the dynamics that we had in the ‘22 race are the same in ‘24,” Peters said. “And we’re seeing very contentious primaries on the Republican side that will likely mean that a very damaged candidate comes out of those primaries to face a very strong incumbent.”

Despite the parallels, Senate Democrats in the 2022 midterms were not defending any states that Trump carried in the last presidential election.

Yet just like 2022, Democrats are buoyed by this year’s election results in Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky that underscored the power of abortion rights as an issue a year after the Dobbs decision, something Peters predicted will be a “powerful issue” in 2024.

Some states, however, present unique dilemmas – namely Arizona. There, Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego could face Republican Kari Lake in a general election.

But it’s still uncertain whether Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, will run again in Arizona and whether she would do so as a third-party candidate. If she does, Daines told CNN last month that Sinema would have a “difficult path” to win.

Both parties are uncertain how her potential candidacy could impact their respective candidate. So far, neither the DSCC nor Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has endorsed Gallego or detailed how they would handle a three-candidate race, instead waiting for Sinema to make her decision known.

“We are making investments in those states that we want to make sure that a Republican does not win,” Peters said when asked if the DSCC would back Gallego. “We’re going to continue making investments in Arizona like we do in other states.”

Cornel West sets his sights on a key battleground state.

Independent presidential hopeful Cornel West is taking aim at Michigan by courting voter groups that Joe Biden is struggling with — in a state where a single percentage point could make the difference for the president’s reelection bid.

West will take his threadbare campaign to the state early next year to rally support among Arab American voters in Dearborn, "environmental justice advocates" in the majority Black city of Flint, university students and indigenous populations, according to plans shared with POLITICO.

Michigan’s diverse population gives West the opportunity to court support at a time when Biden's weakness with voters of color is becoming more pronounced. Recent polling in Michigan shows Biden's softening support among Black voters and the large Arab American population in the state has been highly critical of the administration's handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict.

West, a Black intellectual who has a long history with both communities, believes he is well positioned to appeal to these groups. But he is operating on a shoestring budget and with an unconventional campaign structure, raising questions about whether he has the wherewithal to make significant headway in the state.

“We're the only major candidate, I think, who’s bringing any kind of sanity and sensitivity to the suffering in Gaza. Just strikes me that all the other three major candidates are living in a Neolithic Age when it comes to dealing with what's going on in the Middle East,” West said in an interview. “They would take us back, and I'm the only one who would take us forward.”

But as West begins charting out the type of campaign he wants to run around the country, he is also still trying to assemble the right team to execute his vision.

The first-time candidate started his 2024 presidential run on the People's Party ticket, before moving to the Green Party, and is now running as an independent. West also since replaced campaign manager Peter Daou with four co-campaign managers.

The West team is now led by Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright, who specializes in environmental and climate justice; Ceyanna Dent, a Midwest-based grassroots organizer; as well as former Bernie Sanders presidential campaign staffers Edwin DeJesus and Madeline Merritt.

In the jazz parlance that West regularly uses to describe his candidacy, the campaign is getting more out and free.

“I am in no way an ordinary politician,” West said. “Therefore, it's a matter of making sure that we have people in place who are willing to be unorthodox and cut against the grain, organizationally, internally and politically and morally.”

"We want to be jazz-like, in terms of raising all of the different voices," he added.

One strength West does bring to the campaign is his appeal to progressive groups. And he appears keen on utilizing those connections.

West, who has been to several pro-Palestinian demonstrations in recent weeks, plans to make a stop in Dearborn, a town outside of Detroit with a significant Arab American population and in collaboration with Jewish Voice for Peace. The town has had several pro-Palestinian demonstrations since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, and in 2021, Arab American advocates protested a Biden visit to the local Ford plant over his stance on Israel and Palestine.

West will also travel to Flint, Michigan to focus on the town’s water crisis and environmental justice issues, as well as stops at the University of Michigan and Michigan State to rally with students. West also plans to stop at the state's remote Upper Peninsula to visit with indigenous populations.

“By speaking to Michignaders, we will be speaking to pretty much the entire country at the same time,” said Rogers-Wright, West’s co-campaign manager. “This is a very critical state. Whoever wins that state is going to be the president.”

“We’re following the lead of young folk and Arab Americans in a pivotal state who themselves have said they wouldn’t be voting for President Biden if the election was tomorrow," he said. "The same can be said by people in the environmental justice community.”

The Biden campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

West is campaigning on a small budget. He has raised just over $320,000 in about four months of campaigning. Compared to the major party candidates and fellow independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the campaign has a major financial disadvantage.

Still, West is averaging about 3.8 percent in the national polls of a four-way race that includes Biden, Trump and Kennedy, according to RealClearPolitics.

The biggest question for West is in how many states he’ll get himself on the ballot. In recent interviews West said at least 35 is possible, but a person familiar with his campaign operations said they’re optimistic about surpassing that number.

West said the campaign has legal support from two lawyers who can help the inevitable challenges that third party candidates face when trying to get on the ballot as well as the “collective support” from "brother" Ralph Nader and "sister" Jill Stein, who both ran for president outside of the two major parties in multiple election cycles. Stein announced last week that she will again seek the Green Party nomination in 2024.

There will also be rallies and events in every state where West is seeking to get on the ballot, starting with Utah, which has the first presidential filing deadline for the general election.

West is also weighing his options for his vice presidential pick. Naming a running mate in advance is a requirement in some states for third party candidates to gain ballot access. Rodgers-Wright said the campaign is giving more consideration to female running mates in an effort to have a more representative ticket.

But the odds are against West. No candidate outside of the two party system has won the presidency since it was established in the 19th century. The last third party candidate to win any states in a presidential contest was “Dixiecrat” George Wallace in 1968.

Voters in swing states have also been less likely to vote for third party candidates in recent presidential election cycles, according to a POLITICO analysis.

But West’s vision is that voters in 2024 will feel differently about a “free” candidate like himself.

“People are looking for not just leadership, but they're looking for statespersons,” he said. “They’re tired of these garden variety politicians.”