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Ross Perot’s Revenge
Could 2024 be the year of the third-party candidate?
“As a Trump-Biden election begins to come into focus, the biggest question will be the impact of third parties,” MSNBC analyst Steve Kornacki mused in the wake of Trump’s New Hampshire primary win last week.
“There was a poll from the Washington Post at the end of last year that matched Trump and Biden and found a close result,” noted Kornacki. “And then they re-pulled the same voters and put several — I think it put RFK Junior, Joe Manchin, to test the name, the libertarian candidate and maybe one other — they put them all in front of voters, and that third-party choices combined were getting something like 15% of the vote.”
The situation is giving longtime pollsters and political analysts flashbacks of Ross Perot, who managed to get 20% of the popular vote once upon a time.
“No one’s matched that number or come close to it since,” Kornacki concluded. “Could that be something that happens this year? And would that disproportionally affect one candidate or the other?”
Suddenly this question was echoing from every quarter in the press.
“The Pollster Getting Under Democrats’ Skin,” wrote Ryan Lizza for Politico on January 27, 2024.