PPP: Third-party bids would help Obama

Third-party bids would help Obama

Some have suggested that with an unpopular president who's got a somewhat dissatisfied base and suffers from a weak economy, and with a Republican nominee who inevitably will either struggle with the middle or who is not conservative enough for the right, there is room for a strong third-party bid for the first time in at least 16 years. But we took a look at seven possible independent candidates against Obama and his strongest GOP challenger, Mitt Romney, and found that the chances of defection by GOP-inclined voters are stronger than are cracks in the Democrats’ armor. Despite their grumbling, Democrats remain pretty united behind Obama, and six of the seven possible independent candidates would hurt Romney more than the president.

Head-to-head, Romney and Obama are tied at 45% in the national popular vote, per Tuesday’s release. Against Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-independent New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the major-party candidates are still knotted at 42%, with Bloomberg at 10%. Faced with a well-known moderate who leans more left these days, this is the only instance in which Romney is able to hold more of his base than the president does of his (82% versus 78%). But Obama treads water by holding a six-point lead with independents, 13% of whom go to Bloomberg.

With a challenge from his left by either Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders or perpetual Democratic thorn Ralph Nader, Obama would remain at 45%, with Romney falling to 41% and Nader getting 7% and Sanders only 5%. Partly because Democrats hate Nader and aren't familiar with Sanders, Romney would still win more Democratic support, in double digits, than either of these liberal candidates would. But Obama again leads, this time by ten against Sanders and 13 against Nader, with independent voters.

Jon Huntsman has spent a lot of time criticizing both parties lately, and if he takes his iconoclasm from his quixotic GOP primary bid to the general, he would earn 7%, with Obama prevailing, 46-40. Huntsman is the second-least-known of these candidates after Sanders, so he essentially serves as a "generic centrist independent" in more than half of poll respondents' eyes. Romney still pulls more Democrats than Huntsman does, but Obama leads by 18 with independents.

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