2024 election is a 'huge opening' as Joe Manchin-aligned 'No Labels' Party threatens to spoil race: Report
The 2024 presidential election presents a major opportunity for a third-party like No Labels to "spoil" the race, according to a professor who studies third party groups in the U.S.
"There is a huge opening for third parties," Valdosta State University professor Bernard Tamas, a political scientist at Valdosta State University, told Politico in an interview published Wednesday.
"Successful third parties are like tidal waves," he said. "You don’t really know that they’re here until they’re coming at you."
Politico explained that a "spoiler" candidate "could easily siphon off enough votes in one state or another to tip the election" if the race is "close" between presumptive nominees Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
With less than a year to go before the presidential election, a number of politicians, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West, have started campaigns for president. Tamas focused on the independent political group No Labels, which is closely aligned with outgoing West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin.
Former Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman — who served as both a Democrat and an Independent — said in November if 2024 becomes a rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, he could see Manchin as a potential candidate for the group to unite around. However, he said there is no guarantee "No Labels" will field a candidate.
In an NBC News interview, Manchin said he will do anything to help America, and that if that meant a presidential bid, then "absolutely" he would ponder it.
Tamas argued that the "traditional third-party strategy is referred to as ‘sting like a bee.’"
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"What third parties do is they come in, and they present a new galvanizing issue, something that the major parties have been ignoring, and present it in a way that forces the major parties to respond," he said, adding that successful third parties need to create a valid "threat" to the Democratic and Republican Party establishments.
Tamas said that third parties were gaining so much more media attention this race "because of the stakes of the election and because the assumption is that the election is going to be so close."
He continued: "I think Democrats are particularly concerned about this. Whether they are accurately reading that it’s going to hurt them more is unclear. But it’s a giant open question whether this is going to help the Democrats or the Republicans more. The Democratic strategists think it’ll help the Republicans more, but nobody knows that for sure."
Fox News' Charles Creitz contributed to this report.