Support dips for minor presidential candidates, AJC poll finds

ATLANTA — Support for independent and third-party presidential candidates in Georgia has dropped since June as the state’s Democrats and Republicans battled to tip the scales in the tightened race between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s latest poll released Wednesday.

The bottom four candidates on Georgia’s ballot are struggling to shore up support among likely voters. Libertarian Chase Oliver, The Green Party’s Jill Stein, independent Cornel West and Claudia De la Cruz, the Party of Socialism and Liberation’s nominee, collectively polled below 1%, according to the AJC poll.

Support for long-shot candidates fell from more than 10% in the AJC’s June poll to below 1% since independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ended his campaign last month to back Trump.

“Very few people, especially since RFK pulled out, want to go third party or independent,” said Kerwin Swint, a political science professor at Kennesaw State University.

The latest Georgia numbers show Trump and Harris neck-and-neck at 47% and 44% support, respectively; there is a 3.1% margin of error. Swint credits part of this to the “very divided and very polarized” electorate.

“It’s an unusual year where people have seemed to have pretty much made up their minds among the two major party candidates,” Swint said.

But for those still backing minor candidates, it could be that they “can’t stomach voting for Trump or Harris, and they’re either not going to vote at all or they’ve decided they are going to vote for someone like Cornel West,” he said.

Independent and third-party supporters know their candidates are unlikely to make a dent on Election Day, and it’s unclear whether ballots cast for West or De la Cruz will count at all, as Democrat-backed ballot access challenges have made their way up to the Supreme Court of Georgia for oral arguments next week.

Two Fulton County Superior Court judges handed down rulings last week reversing Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who last month decided West and De la Cruz could be on the ballot. But the state’s highest court stayed that ruling over the weekend. That temporarily requalified the candidates two days before absentee ballots for military and overseas voters were mailed.

In this year’s tight race between Harris and Trump, voters that make up less than the poll’s margin of error could make the difference in states like Georgia. Democrats are seeking to bar minor candidates so they don’t potentially take votes away from Harris.