As Kamala Harris and Donald Trump battle for the presidency, there is another factor that could decide the election: the impact of third-party votes.

With the race expected to be extremely close, experts say ballots for the Green party’s Jill Stein, Cornel West or Robert F Kennedy Jr could potentially pull enough votes away from Harris or Trump to make a difference – a worrying development for both Democrats. and Republicans.

Particularly in the swing state of Michigan, dissatisfaction with Harris’ position on Israel’s war on Gaza has driven some voters toward Stein, who has been critical of Israel. In Michigan and also Wisconsin, dissatisfaction with Trump’s role in the Republican party could lead to protest votes for Kennedy (despite his dropping out of the race earlier this year). Given Joe Biden’s narrow margin of victory over Trump in key states in 2020, any ballot measures elsewhere could be decisive.

“The vote is so close right now that a slight tilt one way or another could tilt the outcome,” said Bernard Tamas, a professor of political science at Valdosta State University and author of The Demise and Rebirth of American Third Parties : Poised. for political revival?.

The third-party candidates most capable of winning votes appear to be Stein and Kennedy, who, ironically, would prefer not to run at all. Kennedy suspended his independent presidential campaign in August and endorsed Trump, but courts in Michigan and Wisconsin ruled that his name will remain on the ballot.

“I wonder if we’ll see a little bit of what I might call ‘the Nikki Haley effect’ with RFK,” Tamas said.

“Nikki Haley dropped out of the primaries and still captured a significant percentage of the Republican vote. If you take the many Republicans who are unhappy with Trump as a candidate, and if they don’t want to vote for Harris, they might end up voting for RFK even knowing he isn’t even on the ballot. Actually just as a protest.”

Biden won Wisconsin in 2020 by just 20,000 votes, and Michigan by about 150,000, meaning a trickle of support from Harris or Trump could be influential. In Michigan, a specific set of circumstances appears to have played into Stein’s hands, with the state’s large Arab-American and Muslim-American populations unhappy with Harris’ position on Gaza. These communities have historically leaned toward Democratic candidates, but evidence suggests they are divided over how to vote.

Stein, whose campaign has benefited from hundreds of thousands of dollars in spending from pro-Republican groups, has been an outspoken critic of Israel and the Biden administration and has courted Muslim voters. She received an enthusiastic welcome earlier this year at ArabCon, the annual meeting of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and was endorsed by the American Arab and Muslim Political Action Committee and the Abandon Harris group.

“Michigan’s margins were so small in the previous elections,” said Nura Sediqe, an assistant professor of American politics at Michigan State University.

“(Stein) could shave votes away from the Democratic party, especially among young people ages 18 to 40, and from specific ethno-racial backgrounds who vote – Arab Americans and Muslim Americans – there’s been a lot of talk in these specific subsets of voters about voting for a third party, so it could take away their vote. These are all people who are more likely to be Democratic voters who could ultimately switch.”

Opinion polls on this issue have produced inconsistent results. Last week, a national survey of Arab Americans conducted by the Arab News Research and Studies Unit found that 43% supported Trump, compared to 41% for Harris and 4% for Stein.

A survey of American Muslims by the Council on American-Islamic Relations of American Muslims found that 42.3% plan to vote for Stein, 41% for Harris and 9.8% for Trump.

Stein’s growing appeal has drawn very different responses from her opponents.

“Jill Stein, I like her a lot,” Trump said earlier this year at a campaign rally in Philadelphia. ‘Do you know why? She takes 100% of (Democrats).”

It appears Democrats agree. The Democratic National Committee on Monday announced a series of ads that will appear on Instagram and YouTube, aiming to discourage people from voting for Stein and West, who have also been critical of Israel.

The ads included Trump’s comments about appreciating Stein “very much”, while Trump also praised West, while the pro-democracy organization MoveOn this week announced a “seven-figure” ad campaign that it said was aimed at appealing to people who a decision has yet to be made about a candidate and ‘curious third-party voters’.

There are 242,000 registered Muslim voters in Michigan, Sediqe said, 145,000 of whom voted in 2020. About two-thirds of all Muslims nationally voted for Biden that year — a big boost for the Democrat.

“Muslims are divided. Not all of them vote for a third party, but let’s imagine that a third party does: then you have up to 50,000 votes that traditionally went to the Democrats leaving. So if the margin is as small as last time, it could have consequences for the Democratic party,” Sediqe said.

Democrats in Michigan and elsewhere are trying to get their message out that a vote for a third-party candidate is a vote for Trump. But Sediqe fears this could lead to certain groups of voters being scapegoated if Harris loses the election.

“What these people who are concerned about third parties need to keep in mind is that they are trying to send policy signals to Democrats not to have their vote taken for granted,” she said.

“The reality is that they are very strategic voters: ‘I want something. Will you give it to me? No, okay, then I’ll move my voice somewhere else.’ It’s a rational choice they make. And so I think my only concern is the view that it’s irrational. It’s very rational.”