DOUBLING DOWN — If President Joe Biden wants to squeeze out of a polling deficit, he’ll need to secure the votes of some people who don’t like him very much. The good news is, many of these voters don’t like former President Donald Trump either. They might be the most important group in the 2024 election: Call them ‘the double haters.’ Double haters — voters who are unsatisfied with both Trump and Biden — make up roughly one-fifth of the electorate. Recent polls from the Marquette Law School, NYT-Siena College and Morning Consult all reported the same number: 19 percent. That’s a huge chunk in a race that’s likely to be tight. Demographically the group resembles the general electorate, although it leans slightly younger and more Hispanic; there are also an equal number of Democrats and Republicans. These double haters have been an important group for multiple election cycles — this year, with both candidates’ favorability ratings plummeting, the number of voters who dislike both major party candidates may surpass the previous high water mark in 2016. Back then, Trump won a bigger share of the double haters than Hilary Clinton, outperforming her by about 17 percentage points amongst the group that made up 18 percent of the electorate. Biden turned the tables in 2020 and won the group by 15 percentage points (granted, they only made up about 3 percent of the electorate then, according to exit polling), and he continues to have a 45 percent to 33 percent advantage. This year, however, a third-party candidate seems to be a far more popular option — at least for now. Most importantly, double haters are a volatile group of people, willing to change their minds up until the last minute, pollsters say. In an era of staunch party loyalty, they are outliers who are capable of switching up their allegiance with every news cycle. Such volatility can present a golden opportunity — and also a real challenge. Most double haters who say they’ll vote third party actually have little knowledge of who those third party candidates are, according to Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, and more information in the coming months could very much change their minds. Trump runs the risk of reminding voters of why many of them voted to toss him out in 2020 as more information trickles out of his trials, “Their dislike of Trump seems more durable, more intense, more nonnegotiable, whereas Biden it seems a little milder; perhaps [he has] more ability to turn it around,” Lake said. “So I think it represents an opportunity.” In this election, Biden and Trump aren’t each other’s biggest rivals with this group though — it’s the couch. “The thing I worry about a little bit is this is going to be such a terrible, nasty campaign. And it’s going to go on for so long,” said Chris Matthews, a Republican pollster. “These folks may just be like, ‘I hate them both… It would be bad with both, so I’m just not going to vote.’” Biden will need to give people a reason to head out to the polls, and this group of voters is zeroed in on the economy, according to Lake. Many double haters are concerned about the cost of living and health care in particular. To win, Biden needs to remember this isn’t 2020. Double haters have gone from 3 percent to 19 percent of the electorate, a sign of the fatigue the general public is already feeling toward this re-election matchup. He’s also far more unpopular than in 2020 — according to polls, the most unpopular president up for re-election in modern history, to be exact. And the “vote against Trump” message from 2020 isn’t always particularly persuasive to double haters, Lake said. They want to vote against Biden too. The 2016 election is probably the better parallel to this upcoming election because the share of double haters is comparable. The 18 percent of double haters leaned toward Trump in 2016 for a series of reasons: an ongoing investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails that the FBI did not conclude until two days before the election (even if she was ultimately exonerated), Clinton’s reputation as a status quo candidate and her lack of a clear economic message. They also broke for Trump so late in the game that the shift wasn’t picked up in much public polling, a cautionary reminder of the group’s volatility. But Trump isn’t the same candidate who he was in 2016 either. Now a one-term ex-president, he hasn’t been keen on reaching out to his non-believers, and has doubled down on his MAGA agenda. Polls suggest that might be the greatest blessing of all for Biden. “[Trump] himself seems to be very ready to dismiss anyone who doesn’t agree with him on the MAGA front. He’s basically telling Haley voters, ‘we don’t want you, we don’t want the Romney types in this party,’” Matthews said. “You have sort of a hard time imagining that he is going to be like, ‘Yeah, I want to figure out why people don’t like me and try and make accommodations to win them over.’” Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at ckim@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @ck_525.
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