NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE L arry Hogan, the former governor of Maryland, wrote in March that he would not run for the Republican nomination for president, arguing that the “multicar pileup” of alternatives would simply grant Donald Trump the nomination, as happened in 2016. Now, Hogan is working with a political organization that could help swing the general election in Trump’s favor.
Last weekend on CNN’s State of the Union, the former Maryland governor said that No Labels, the political group he co-chairs, would be “very likely” to promote a third-party presidential candidate if the Democratic and Republican parties nominate President Joe Biden and former president Trump, respectively. His argument, which his CNN co-panelists greeted with derision, was that “if most of the voters don’t want A or B, [No Labels has] an obligation to give them C, I mean, for the good of the country.” He demurred when asked whether his name would appear at the top of a No Labels ticket, but has previously said he would not “rule out” such a possibility.
Hogan is right that the voters are unhappy with the men most likely to be the major-party presidential nominees in 2024. For the second time in three election cycles, Americans are looking down the barrel of a matchup between two historically unpopular candidates. A recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that 55 percent of Americans believe Biden is unfit for office, while 53 percent say the same about Republican front-runner Trump. The RealClearPolitics average has Biden’s favorability rating at 40 percent and Trump’s at 38.5 percent. For reference, around Election Day 2016, 36 percent of Americans had a favorable view of Trump, and 47 percent had a favorable view of his opponent, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Much like Trump’s first go-around, the 2024 general election may turn out to be a race to the bottom, with the slightly less unpopular candidate ultimately capturing the Electoral College.
Democratic Party insiders and aligned groups are, for their part, concerned. Third Way, a center-left think tank, has repeatedly warned of the dangers a third-party candidate could pose to Biden’s reelection, arguing that such a campaign would draw votes from the incumbent and throw the election to Trump. Public distaste for both candidates only magnifies these worries, with 49 percent of respondents to a NewsNation/DDHQ survey released last month saying they were either somewhat or very likely to vote for a third-party candidate, should one arise, if the two major parties once again nominate Biden and Trump.
No Labels’ own most-recent polling on Tuesday, which covers eight likely 2024 battleground states — Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — shows 72 percent of voters in those states do not want Biden to run, 63 percent would prefer not to see Trump on the ballot, and 63 percent would be willing to vote for a hypothetical “moderate independent.” It is, though, quite hard — nearly impossible, in fact — for a third-party candidate to be able to win the White House. Even in 1992, when Ross Perot made the most viable third-party challenge in recent history, he failed to win even a single state. Maybe that’s a good sign for anxious Democrats.
“One of the things we know from past data on presidential races is that Americans continue to tell pollsters over and over again they want more choices,” said Karlyn Bowman, a distinguished senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute. “They like the idea of a third party, but when it comes down to an actual contest . . . you find that most people actually are pretty satisfied with the candidates.”
What Bowman references is the reality that third-party-curious voters tend to come home to the party for which they typically vote once November rolls around. Assuming that would happen again if No Labels were to run a presidential candidate in 2024, the only realistic impact he or she could have on the race would be to act as a spoiler. And looking at how moderates have voted in both presidential and midterm elections over the past decade or so, it is reasonable to expect that the presence of a centrist third-party candidate would hurt Biden more than it would hurt Trump.
“In 2012, Barack Obama lost independent voters by something like five points, but he carried the moderate vote pretty comfortably — by 14 points or so,” said J. Miles Coleman, an associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “Even in bad years like 2010 and 2014, exit polls had the Democrats winning the self-identified moderates, which is the constituency No Labels is most likely to pull from.”
So who, if anyone, might launch such a campaign? It would make sense for, say, Joe Manchin to run as an independent candidate in 2024. He wants to continue his political career, and he faces a tough Senate reelection campaign in a state Trump won handily in 2016 and 2020. Running a presidential campaign would allow him to avoid that tough race while ensuring that he remained nationally relevant. Hogan, on the other hand, has contradicted himself at every turn. He chose to stay out of the Republican primaries because he believed that entering the contest would only help Trump win but now may be considering a run that could possibly hand his bête noire the White House once again. Being from Maryland, Hogan has little chance of winning a Senate seat. But it does not make sense, if his statements about Trump are to be taken seriously, for him to run in the general election in 2024.
“I could very easily see a situation where [a third-party candidate] could deliver certain close states to Trump,” Coleman told National Review. “In cases like Georgia or Arizona, Biden didn’t really need those states to get over the 270-electoral-vote mark; those were icing on the cake. But what was important were [Rust Belt] states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Biden reclaimed a lot of those states in 2020, but he really patched up the ‘Blue Wall’ more than he rebuilt it.” A third-party candidate, Coleman explained, could siphon off enough votes from Biden for Trump to win the midwestern states that won him the election in 2016.
Americans who oppose a potential second Trump administration are by no means obligated to support Biden. And Hogan should not sacrifice his values by endorsing or campaigning for the current president. But if he really believes the threat Trump poses to the health of the republic is greater than that posed by Biden’s policies, he should stay out of the race.