President Biden is facing growing concerns among independent voters as polling shows lackluster approval from a key group in deciding who wins the White House.
A Gallup poll released last week shows Biden’s approval rating among independents fell 4 points in the past month to 35 percent. The report noted the president’s approval has been “generally weak” with that group since July 2021 — after he logged 61 percent approval from independents at the start of his term.
“The independent vote just becomes more and more important in every cycle. And it can really make a margin,” said Democratic strategist Jon Reinish.
“It also goes without saying that these are the most fickle voters and can be the toughest to court. They can be the first to warm up to you when you’re out of power, and also the first to back away from you once you’re in power,” Reinish said. “I think Biden fully realizes that the independent vote is going to be very, very critical to his win.”
Polling in recent months has also indicated many independents are concerned about Biden’s age and aren’t enthusiastic about having Biden and Trump at the top of their respective tickets — amid an apparent uptick in pessimistic views on politics overall.
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It’s still early in the 2024 cycle, and strategists emphasized that polling at this point isn’t a predictor of what happens next November. Reinish said, though, it’s a bad sign if these kinds of numbers continue into next summer.
“There’s some re-courting and reparative work to do” with independents, he said.
And as the president sees less-than-ideal approval numbers from independent voters, he’s also heading off a now-larger slate of independent candidates — stoking worries that voters’ frustration with the two-party system could spoil Biden’s chances.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who initially ran as a Democratic challenger to Biden, declared earlier this month that he would switch to an independent bid. Progressive academic Cornel West recently switched from the Green Party to run as an independent.
Some experts forecast, however, that Kennedy’s independent bid could help Biden clinch a victory, in theory by giving independent voters an alternative to Trump.
“Potentially weak major party nominees paired with a long list of third party candidates could lead to a higher-than-usual level of third party voting in 2024,” Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics said in an analysis released last week.
Although Sabato’s Crystal Ball predicts a third-party candidate doesn’t have a real shot of winning the presidential race, “it may be that the third party vote ends up disproportionately hurting one of the major party nominees over the other,” Kondik said.
A recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found Biden won a hypothetical three-way contest with Trump and Kennedy — with 44 percent for the president, 37 percent for the former president and 16 percent for the independent.
With Kennedy in the race, Biden’s support among independents dropped 10 points, and Trump’s support among independents dropped 15 points.
“Although it’s always tricky to assess the impact of a third-party candidate, right now Kennedy alters the equation in Biden’s favor,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, in a statement. “What this does speak to, however, is that about one in six voters are looking for another option[,] especially independents.”
At the same time, a Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey found Trump took the lead in a hypothetical matchup between the three candidates.
A Suffolk University/USA Today poll released last week found Biden and Trump were tied at 37 percent in a hypothetical four-way with Kennedy, who earned 13 percent, and West, who got 4 percent. The report noted West’s supporters would break to Biden if he weren’t in the race. Another 8 percent were undecided.
Democratic strategist Eddie Vale stressed that West leans to the highly progressive left and Kennedy has leaned toward the right since his party switch, meaning neither may have much appeal to “actual independent voters.”
Biden also faces a new competitor within his party, sparking Republican hope that the challenge could hurt Biden.
Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) jumped into the Democratic presidential primary with a long-shot bid to challenge Biden after arguing the incumbent shouldn’t try for another four years in the Oval Office.
Last week’s Gallup poll found that, while his support among independents ticked down 4 points since last month, Biden’s approval rating among Democrats fell 11 points. Although that rating still sits at a significant 75 percent, the report notes it’s the worst figure among Democrats of his presidency. His overall 11th-quarter score, though, is about where former President Obama’s was at this point in 2011.
“The Biden coalition that elected him and Kamala Harris in 2020 will look a lot different than the coalition that will reelect them in 2024. Independent thinkers will become an even larger voting bloc in this election than it was in the midterms and the 2020 general election,” said Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright.
The Democratic primary is set to “settle itself,” said Seawright, with Phillips unlikely to clinch the nomination over the incumbent president, but he underscored the stakes of splintering support away from Biden and opening the door to a Republican besting him in the general election.
“I think that there are always going to be people looking for alternative options. What the president and others have to make certain is that that option doesn’t have oxygen,” Seawright said. That means sounding the alarm about the threats posed by a Republican nominee and about “the threat of what a third-party candidate can do.”
For instance, Reinish argued reproductive rights protections in Roe v. Wade would still be in place if Green Party nominee Jill Stein had not attracted third-party voters in 2016. Many Democrats blamed Stein for Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump and have raised concerns about that happening again.
But Reinish contended the Biden campaign appears to be taking concerns about independent voters and independent candidates seriously – while the president’s allies have largely shrugged off poor poll numbers at this point in the race. His campaign has expressed confidence about reaching independent voters in 2024.
Biden notably had the advantage with independent voters over Trump in 2020, and independents also generally broke for Democrats over Republicans during the midterms.
The independent candidates in the race “could complicate things” for Biden as he campaigns, said Democratic pollster Mark Mellman — but he waved off the long-term concerns.
“The reality is, these third-party candidates always do better before the election than they do in the election. And people are going to realize that this is a serious, important election, that the results have real consequences, and they’re going to want to be with someone who has a chance of winning,” Mellman said.
It’s important to broadcast to independent voters that “this is a close race, it could go either way, and their votes could make the difference,” Mellman said. “And that’s not going to be really clear to many of those people until very late in the game.”