From: januarybaybee@gmail.com   
      
   NY Times July 7, 2020   
      
   They Can’t Stomach Trump. They’re Sufficiently Comfortable With Biden.   
      
   Some voters who disliked both nominees in 2016 chose a third-party candidate   
   instead. Now, many of them are shunning President Trump and are ready to back   
   Joe Biden.   
      
      
   In Florida in 2016, J.C. Planas, a former Republican state representative, was   
   uncomfortable with Hillary Clinton but detested Donald Trump, so he wrote in   
   former Gov. Jeb Bush for president.   
      
   In New Hampshire that year, Peter J. Spaulding, a longtime Republican   
   official, supported the Libertarian ticket.   
      
   And in Arizona, Lorena Burns, 56, also voted third party, seeing the choice   
   between Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton as a contest between “two bads.”   
      
   “I didn’t want to be responsible for either,” she said.   
      
   This year, all three of them intend to diverge from their Republican leanings   
   and vote for former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive   
   Democratic nominee.  They are among an emerging group of voters who disliked   
   both major-party    
   presidential nominees in 2016, but who are now so disillusioned with President   
   Trump — and sufficiently comfortable with Mr. Biden — that they are   
   increasingly willing to support the Democrat.   
      
   It’s a dynamic that could have significant implications in several of the   
   most competitive battleground states, like Arizona and Wisconsin, where the   
   third-party vote in 2016 was greater than the margin of difference between Mr.   
   Trump and Mrs. Clinton.   
      
   Recent polling also shows that Mr. Biden has an overwhelming advantage over   
   Mr. Trump among voters who have unfavorable views of both candidates — a   
   cohort that ultimately broke in Mr. Trump’s favor in 2016, exit polls showed.   
      
   Ms. Burns of Guadalupe, Ariz., said she recently made her first political   
   donation, to the Democratic National Committee.  She said she  agreed with   
   many of Mr. Trump’s policies, but was turned off by his behavior.  “Just   
   the lying, just the    
   craziness, the bullying — I’d rather pay more money than be with him for   
   another four years,” she said.  “I’m willing to pay more money in taxes   
   just to be away from him.  He’s corrupting the country.”   
      
   In Ms. Burns’s state of Arizona, Mr. Trump won by 3.5 percentage points in   
   2016. The Libertarian Party nominee, Gary Johnson, won 4.1 percent of the   
   vote, and in other states where the race was even closer — including   
   Pennsylvania, Michigan,    
   Wisconsin and Florida — he pulled in between 2 and 4 percent.  The Green   
   Party candidate Jill Stein took in roughly 1 percent in those states — small   
   but significant totals in contests that were decided by slim margins.   
      
   In any single poll, it is difficult for pollsters to reach a significant   
   number of voters who supported third-party candidates in 2016, making it   
   impossible to trace their preferences now.   
      
   And  Mr. Trump — who faced vocal opposition that year from some prominent   
   Republicans and won anyway — remains overwhelmingly popular with Republican   
   voters.  While many center-right voters have distanced themselves from his   
   party, there are others    
   who initially expressed misgivings about him and have since come to embrace   
   him, resistant to the leftward drift of the Democratic Party.   
      
   But in a year when swing voters are scarce, some of the voters who effectively   
   stayed on the sidelines in 2016 are showing signs of political movement now   
   — and there is evidence that Mr. Biden stands to benefit.   
      
   There appears to be far less interest in third-party candidates compared with   
   the same point in 2016, pollsters say.   
      
   “Barring some unforeseen circumstance, there’s just not a lot of appetite   
   for third party,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University   
   Polling Institute. “This is two-person for nearly all American voters.”   
      
   His polling from late June found that among voters who have unfavorable views   
   of both candidates, Mr. Biden leads the president 55 percent to 21 percent.    
   In 2016, Mr. Trump won the voters who disliked both candidates, according to   
   exit polls.   
      
   And according to a recent poll of registered voters in six major battleground   
   states by The Times and Siena College, people who say they did not vote in   
   2016 overwhelmingly favor Mr. Biden over Mr. Trump in November, 56 percent to   
   25 percent.     
      
   Among registered voters in those states who said they did cast ballots in   
   2016, 47 percent said they planned to support Mr. Biden and 42 percent said   
   they would back Mr. Trump.   
      
   The Monmouth poll also found that at this point, “fewer voters have a   
   negative opinion of the Democratic nominee” compared with four years ago.   
      
   “You had two lightning rod candidates running last time,” said the veteran   
   Republican pollster Glen Bolger, who added that there was still time for   
   Republicans to shape perceptions of Mr. Biden.  “At this point in time, Joe   
   Biden isn’t nearly as    
   controversial as Hillary Clinton was, so I think third party candidates are a   
   little bit slower to come out of the woodwork.”   
      
   In 2016, voters who went third party spanned the ideological spectrum, from   
   Republicans who did not believe Mr. Trump was a true conservative, to   
   progressives who opposed Mrs. Clinton from the left.     
      
   The Biden campaign has been working to improve Mr. Biden’s standing with   
   young liberals, aware of the need to engage and mobilize those voters who have   
   long been skeptical of his relatively centrist policy stances.  In part   
   because of his difficulty    
   gaining the confidence of young voters and liberals, Mr. Biden’s net   
   favorability rating nationwide remains stuck close to zero.   
      
   But Mr. Biden’s team also sees significant opportunities to improve his   
   favorability rating both with disaffected voters who have been moving away   
   from the Democratic Party — voters without college degrees, for example —   
   and with center-right    
   moderates who, in the Trump era, have slipped farther from the Republican   
   Party.   
      
   This year, a number of organizations have also mobilized to target   
   Republican-leaning voters who dislike Mr. Trump but do not consider themselves   
   Democrats, aiming to bring them into the Biden fold.   
      
   An organization called Republican Voters Against Trump has released   
   testimonials from voters who have never voted for a Democrat before.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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