Third-party candidates could play big role in 2024 election, leading to Biden's 'undoing,' critics say

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Progressive scholar, philosopher and former Harvard professor Cornel West threw his hat into the ring for the 2024 presidential race, announcing a third-party bid on Monday. 

West announced in a video posted to Twitter that he would be running as a candidate for the People’s Party. He took shots at both Republicans and Democrats in his announcement, saying, "Neither political party wants to tell the truth about Wall Street, about Ukraine, about the Pentagon, about Big Tech."

Fox News’ Kayleigh McEnany acknowledged the challenges facing West as a third-party candidate but ultimately predicted he could play a big role in the 2024 election.

"It's very hard to get on the ballot. Currently, his party is only on the ballot in three states. But here is where this could make a huge difference. 2016, according to NBC, 6% of those who voted, voted for a third-party candidate. Compare that to the last election, 2%. So a decrease of 4% for third-party candidates. And of those, they were breaking for Joe Biden on a 2 to 1 basis. So you could make an argument third parties were key to the 2016 election," McEnany explained on "Jesse Watters Primetime." 

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"You don't only have him, though. There's this thing called the No Labels party that they're working up a ticket that they may put on the ballot. They've got I think it's $70 million, Jesse, and they're on the ballot in Arizona already. So third-party candidates may be Joe's undoing."

McEnany added that West will likely attract Black voters because he can talk about "authenticity" and highlight Biden’s low approval rating with the demographic. 

"Biden gave these, you know, well-woven mannequin-like talking points to the Black community and the Latino community and people bought into it and then he failed them. I mean, when you have 34% of Black voters saying that Biden's delivered- 34%?! That is ridiculously low for a president that needs Black voters," she argued. 

Kellyanne Conway, a former counselor to President Trump, said there is precedent that third-party candidates can take away the vote share from an incumbent president in a general election. 

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"Even if you don't become president, [using] a third-party candidate spoiler can decide who is the president. This happened in 1992 when we had Bush 41 as the incumbent and a guy named Bill Clinton. The Arkansas governor got elected with 43.5% of the vote. Why? Because Ross Perot got 19% of the popular vote, even though he didn't rack up any electoral votes," she explained Tuesday on "America’s Newsroom."

Conway argued West’s strategy could be to run to the left of the Biden-Harris administration. 

"...If you play to win and you're Cornel West and you are still not satisfied with the trajectory of the Democratic Party being progressive enough for you under a Biden-Harris administration, key word there, then you're going to run to the left of them," she said. "[West is] going to make a play for people who feel forgotten, who feel abandoned by this Democratic Party, who feel like nobody's listening to them and including them. It's part of how Trump won in 2016, but I think he could do it from the left."

Fox News' Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report