In the 2016 election, Green Party candidate Jill Stein received over 132,000 votes across Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, which are considered key swing states. This contributed to Donald Trump’s narrow victory in those states and ultimately the election, as he won by a margin of roughly 77,000 votes.
Eight years later, the Democratic Party has developed a strategy to prevent Stein from having a similar impact in the upcoming election.
For the first time, the Democratic Party has established a dedicated “war room” focused on monitoring and discrediting third-party candidates. This operation includes a team of over 30 staff members and has a budget in the low seven figures, according to a staffer involved.
“We treat third-party candidates with the same rigor that campaigns treat major party candidates,” says Lis Smith, a veteran Democratic strategist who leads communications for the war room. “We have a full content team, a full press team, a full research team.”
This year, there are four third-party candidates who could potentially influence the outcome: Stein, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver, and independent Cornel West. Many swing state polls featuring multiple candidates show third-party candidates receiving support in the low single-digits, which could potentially make a difference in a close race.
For much of the 2024 campaign, Kennedy garnered enough support in public opinion surveys to raise concerns for both campaigns. However, after dropping out of the race in August and endorsing Trump, the Democrats have shifted their focus to Stein, who is running again as a Green Party candidate.
As in 2016, Stein has no realistic chance of winning the presidency. Instead, her campaign has positioned itself as a protest candidacy, appealing to young and Arab-American voters who are dissatisfied with the Biden administration’s handling of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. “The goal is to punish the Vice President,” said Hassan Abdel Salam, a founder of the group Abandon Harris, at a Stein rally in Dearborn, Mich.
A spokesperson for Stein’s campaign refuted the claim that Stein has no chance of winning and is only running to “punish” Harris. They stated that while they appreciate the endorsement from Abandon Harris, “Hassan does not have a role with our campaign.”
The Democrats have sought to undermine Stein by labeling her a “useful idiot for Russia” and highlighting her close ties to the Kremlin. (The Stein campaign declined to comment.) The party has aired numerous advertisements against Stein, depicting her face morphing into Trump’s. “A vote for Stein is really a vote for Trump,” the ads proclaim. They’ve also purchased billboards in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania with the message “Jill Stein Helped Trump Once. Don’t Let Her Do It Again.”
“We’re making sure voters understand Jill Stein has no path to victory, that she’s in this race to help Donald Trump win, and that we can’t repeat the mistakes of 2016,” says Smith. “By far the most powerful message to voters is that she helped Trump win in 2016, that she has no regrets about it, and that the GOP is going all out to prop her up.” have been representing the Green Party in its efforts to secure ballot access in key states.
A similar strategy helped neutralize Kennedy before he withdrew from the race. When RFK Jr. first entered the race, he was attracting votes from Biden’s base, Smith says. However, by framing Kennedy as a right-wing fringe candidate, the Democrats were able to lower his support among Democrats and increase his support among Republicans. By the time he dropped out, Smith says, “he had no appeal to Democratic voters, he was electorally irrelevant.”
Democrats do not view West as a serious threat, arguing that he is not running a real campaign that could significantly affect Harris’s chances. They believe that attacking him would only give him more attention.
If the Democrats succeed in preventing third-party candidates from gaining traction, the war room they created could become a permanent fixture in presidential campaigns. “It’s the first time anyone in American politics has had this in a presidential election,” says Smith. “It won’t be the last.”