While it was largely expected on the part of the Greens to nominate their best performing candidate since Ralph Nader in 2000, Jill Stein (G-MA) has secured her party’s nomination for the 2024 election making her the official nominee in several states. This means that Joe Biden, worried about third-party woes, will have to contend with Green Party ballot access potentially siphoning the vote to the point of potentially 3-5% in the expected battleground states as well as states that could become more competitive. This also comes during a week which has shown repeated polling showing the state of Virginia as being competitive for Donald Trump, something that would immediately place pressure on the Biden camp to resolve given that his path to the White House depends heavily on securing that state’s 13 electoral votes. However, focusing the attention on the Greens for the moment, how much of a threat does Jill Stein pose in this election to Biden’s chances?
When I say that the Greens could get up to 3-5% of the vote, that depends on there being a massive leftwards enthusiasm that ditches Biden, ignores Trump, and goes headlong into a protest vote. More likely the amount will be limited to around 1-2% of the vote nationally, but statistically that’s all the Greens might need to swing the election for Donald Trump anyway. Based on where the Greens have ballot access, their strength is pre-dominantly concentrated in the swing states like North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, Arizona, Maine, etc. In particular, Stein’s harsh stance on anti-Israeli policies might be enough to win over some of the Ceasefire Now voters who have sworn off Biden in the Democratic primary in places like suburban Michigan and are even less giddy about Donald Trump’s more pro-Israel policies. Also, the concentration of younger college-educated votes is more likely to break away from Joe Biden than the older minority voters who are more inclined to defend the current President.
Something else to consider is that Stein isn’t the only left-wing to far-left candidate on the ballot siphoning votes from the Biden camp. The Libertarians nominated another left-wing candidate in Chase Oliver who has one of the most staunchly pro-trans surgery positions for minors of any political candidate in recent memory, something that plays well with civil libertarians but will keep dissenting cultural Republicans from breaking for the LP. The Kennedy campaign is, well, still the Kennedy campaign with a left-winger and a far-left winger mounting their bid against Biden, Cornel West is running his even more ardently left-wing campaign than Stein, and the only “right-wing” challenge to the Republican hegemony on the vote is the Constitution Party where perennial candidate Randall Terry represents a strong downgrade from the usual quality in candidates in past years. This is certainly not an endorsement of Don Blankenship’s “strength” as a candidate, but is to suggest that he worried Mitch McConnell back in 2018 for a reason in the West Virginia Senate primary.
In all, nothing too surprising happened with the selection of Stein as the Green Party nominee as the third-party looks to remain relevant heading into the 2024 election with left and far left parties in North America and Europe struggling for relevancy. The question becomes to what extent can they help the moderate right regain power or is the Biden campaign going to reap the rewards of the judicial actions taken against the former President Donald Trump. These are serious questions that are untested whereas Biden’s weak performances in the primaries have to be juxtaposed with Republican underperformances in special elections in state legislative and congressional elections. The data being put forward makes credible arguments that this election, rather than being a foregone conclusion like it would be in years past at this point, is going to be a doozy. We’ll see what grander role Stein has to play in this later on.
Sources: 2024 United States presidential election – Wikipedia
The Conservatarian Millennial 