How Georgia’s Third Party Candidates Could Swing Election for Trump or Harris

A handful of third-party candidates will be a thorn in the side of either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump come November in the pivotal swing state of Georgia, which could decide the outcome of the presidential election.
The Peach State was decided by 11,779 votes in President Joe Biden’s favor over Trump in 2020, resulting in legal challenges by Trump’s camp and a Fulton County indictment in a racketeering case that includes the former president, who denies he did anything wrong. Then-Libertarian Party candidate Jo Jorgensen received over 62,000 votes (about 1.25 percent of the total vote).
In 2024, Georgia’s 16 electoral votes are not just being chased by the Democrats and Republicans, but also by candidates including the Libertarian Party’s Chase Oliver, Green Party’s Jill Stein, and independents Claudia De la Cruz (Party for Socialism and Liberation) and Cornel West. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, who withdrew his candidacy to endorse Trump, will not be on the ballot.
Last week, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger overruled a state administrative law judge’s ruling to remove West and De la Cruz from the ballot. Georgia Democrats have appealed the ruling, according to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution.
As of September 4, FiveThirtyEight’s forecast showed Harris leading Trump, 46.3 to 45.9 percent, in Georgia.
In the 2022 Georgia Senate runoff election, Oliver received over 2 percent of the statewide vote (81,365 votes) in which current Senator Raphael Warnock defeated Herschel Walker by less than a percentage point.
Oliver, amid campaign stops in Minnesota, Ohio and Tennessee, told Newsweek that his campaign differs from Harris and Trump in that he’s “not just intensely focusing on five or six swing states” but rather growing the national Libertarian contingent with renewed attentiveness toward younger, Gen Z voters who oppose the current two-party system.
“I really don’t like the term ‘spoiler’ because I think the thing that’s already spoiled rotten is the two-party system. [Look at] the way our Congress works, the low approval ratings,” Oliver said. “[We have] a high reelection rate in our Congress, we’re hyper partisan and divided. The two-party system, that’s really what spoiled things and that’s spoiling our republic.”
Instead, he refers to himself as a “disrupter” and takes pride in his role during the 2022 Senate race that he believes made Democrats and Republicans “kind of reassess what issues are important to the American people.”
“We need to continue doing that because that’s what’s healthy for our republic, and I’m just happy that we’re providing a choice for voters,” he said. “The healthiest thing we can have is as many choices as possible on the ballot. I think the two-party system does everything they can to stop that.”
West said in a statement that Raffensperger’s decision “not only upholds the democratic process but also reinforces the power of our collective voice.”
Stein will be on the ballot in Georgia and other swing states such as Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Newsweek reached out to the West and Stein campaigns for comment.
Carl Cavalli, a political-science professor at the University of North Georgia, told Newsweek that third-party candidates remain options for voters who can’t stomach major party candidates—be it so-called “never Trumpers” who won’t vote for Harris, or libertarians who think Trump is too extreme.
“Without Trump, [libertarians] may have reluctantly considered Harris but Oliver gives them a way to avoid that uncomfortable choice,” Cavalli said. “This is all speculation on my part, but it is true that third parties often harbor people who leave one major party but are not yet ready (if ever) to switch to the other one.”
What’s at stake in Georgia has resulted in formidable voter mobilization movements.
The nonpartisan New Georgia Project, around for a decade with 12 statewide offices, works to mobilize voters from historically marginalized communities, including Black and Brown individuals, younger people and LGBTQ.
Ranada Robinson, research director at the nonpartisan New Georgia Project Action Fund, told Newsweek that the group’s goal is to knock on hundreds of thousands of doors this election cycle. Since January, the group has helped register over 40,000 new voters.
“Voters between the ages of 25-34 are the most likely, from the folks that we’ve talked to, to vote third party and about 2.4 percent post-[Biden] switch,” Robinson said. “Before the switch, they were at about 4.9 percent, which really does matter in a state where the elections are won on the margins.”
Brionté McCorkle is executive director of Georgia Conservation Voters, a group that mobilizes voters of all races and ethnicities who are alarmed or impacted by environmental justice and climate issues—voters that include farmers in the state’s overwhelmingly red, rural districts who have experienced climate change’s impact on crop yields and their livelihoods.
“We are keenly aware that when people refer to ‘independents/moderates,’ they often mean white moderates,” McCorkle said. “This was the case for the entire Warnock-Walker election.”
She added: “We believe in activating the large number of low-propensity voters in our target audience who are turned off by partisan politics. These voters can and have made a difference in election outcomes, as they did in 2020, when they are paid attention to, invested in, and contacted early and often to turn out their vote.”
The Harris campaign’s biggest challenge in Georgia is its ground game, Jordan Brown, Georgia state adviser at Movement Voter Project, told Newsweek.
“We can’t just preach to the choir; we have got to mobilize every last vote across Georgia,” Brown said. “The local organizing groups we partner with are stretching every dollar they have to make that happen, but they are deeply under-resourced.
“Voter persuasion requires building trust through deep canvassing, multiple warm-touch conversations, and ongoing engagement. Between now and Election Day, our partners are going to keep doing a lot with a little, but they need more funding to scale up so we can win in 2024, 2026, 2028 and beyond.”
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