Third parties see a moment in Biden-Trump rematch

PHOENIX — The 2024 presidential election is drawing an unusually robust field of independent, third party and long shot candidates hoping to capitalize on Americans’ ambivalence and frustration over a likely rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

Those looking to blaze a new path to the White House range from members of Congress to a prominent academic and a scion of one of the county’s most prominent political families. Their odds are exceedingly long. George Washington was the only person to win the presidency without a party affiliation. An incumbent hasn’t lost his party’s presidential nomination since Democrats passed over Franklin Pierce in 1856. Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860 marked the last time someone from a new party — in his case, the Republican Party — won the White House. But with the United States divided and anxious about the prospect of another Biden-Trump campaign, third-party candidates insist voters are restless enough to defy history.

“This is really fertile ground now for independent politics,” Jill Stein, the Green Party nominee in 2012 and 2016, said in an interview. “There’s so much hunger for a principled politics and for options outside of the two zombie candidates that are being forced down our throats.”

Stein, a physician and environmental activist, announced this month she will make her third bid for the presidency.

Cornel West, a scholar and progressive activist with a loyal following on the left, announced last month he no longer was running under the Green Party banner, but as an independent.

An August poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found 75% of Americans think Biden should not run for president again, and 69% think Trump should not. Both men are underwater with their approval ratings, meaning more Americans view them unfavorably than favorably.