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Donald Trump has a significant lead over President Joe Biden in key swing states heading into the 2024 presidential election, according to a poll.
An Echelon Insights survey of 1,020 likely voters show that 48 percent of those in battleground states said they would definitely or probably vote for the Republican who is the favorite to clinch the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, compared to 41 percent who said they would back Biden.
Biden was able to win the 2020 election after flipping the key swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia. If the Democrat has any hope of getting reelected to the White House next year, he would need to retain at least a majority of battleground states and several other states he won in 2020.
Elsewhere, the Echelon Insights survey shows that Biden would narrowly beat Trump overall in the 2024 election when voters are given a choice of just the president (45 percent) and Trump (44 percent).
However, when voters are asked whom they back between Trump, Biden and progressive activist and Green Party candidate Cornell West, it is the Republican who comes out on top. Trump is the preferred candidate of the likely voters with 43 percent, with Biden behind in 42 percent, and West far off in third place on 4 percent.
When broken down further to voters in battleground states, Trump extends his lead over Biden (48 to 40 percent), with West having the backing of 3 percent of swing-state voters.
When West confirmed he would be running as a presidential candidate in 2024, there were suggestions that he could end up dramatically affecting the results of the next election by pulling voters away from Biden.
"There is always a danger a third-party candidate can impact the electoral college results, particularly if they receive enough votes in a battleground state or states to change the outcome. In a close election, Cornel West could well be a spoiler," David B. Cohen, professor of political science at the University of Akron in Ohio, previously told Newsweek.
"There is no evidence to suggest that the 2024 election will be anything but a very close election decided by razor-thin margins, which means that a third-party candidate could have an outsized influence in the result," Cohen added.
In the 2016 election, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton lost the three key states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to Trump by less than 1 percentage point. In each case, Green Party candidate Jill Stein had received enough votes in the three states to have swung it for Clinton if her supporters backed the Democrat instead.
In the 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, Green Party candidate Ralph Nadar had an arguably bigger influence on the outcome.
Nadar received more than 2.8 million votes overall in the 2000 election, including 97,000 in the then-key swing-state of Florida.
The election between Bush and Gore was so close that it came down to a controversial recount in the Sunshine State. Eventually, Bush was declared the winner in Florida by the Supreme Court with a margin of just over 500 votes. This meant that, if just a small fraction of Nadar's supporters backed the Democrat candidate instead, then Gore would have triumphed in the 2000 election.
In 2008, Nader rejected the idea that his candidacy cost Gore the presidency.
"If the premise is that we have an equal right to run for election, no one's a 'spoiler' unless we're all 'spoilers' of one another," Nader told The Wall Street Journal. "So when they say, 'You cost Gore the election,' I say, 'I thought Bush took more votes from Gore.'"
Elsewhere, the Echelon Insights survey revealed that, while 60 percent of likely Democratic voters said they would "definitely" or "probably" back Biden in a Democratic presidential primary, a further 33 percent replied they would opt to back a different Democratic candidate, with 7 percent stating they were unsure.
The Echelon Insights poll was conducted with 1,020 likely voters between June 26 and 29, with a margin of error of +/- 3.9 percentage points.
Newsweek has contacted the White House for comment via email.
About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, and Florida ... Read more