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While the prospect of another presidential election contested by Joe Biden and Donald Trump seems more inevitable by the day, what’s also clear is that the political dynamics surrounding this contest look quite different than they did four years ago, perhaps chief among them being that Biden no longer has a popularity advantage over his Republican rival.

With a majority of voters viewing both likely major party candidates unfavorably — making the 2024 race more akin to 2016 in some respects, when Trump defeated Hillary Clinton — Morning Consult research indicates a key voting bloc looks ready to step back into the spotlight after a cycle of relative inconsequence four years ago: the so-called double-haters.

According to Morning Consult’s daily survey tracking of more than 300,000 registered voters conducted Sept. 8 through Feb. 19, 19% have an unfavorable opinion of both Biden and Trump, representing quite a departure from 2020, when Biden was much more popular than he is now — which, most of the time, is less popular than Trump — and exit data showed just 3% of voters with unfavorable views of both candidates. 

Rather, the share of voters who dislike both likely candidates looks much closer to 2016, when 18% of double-haters voted in the Trump-Clinton matchup. While Trump, according to exit data, won these voters by 17 percentage points in each of the past two elections, it proved much more consequential in 2016 due to their prevalence in the electorate.

Though the double-haters’ prevalence in the 2024 electorate resembles that of 2016 more than 2020, the demographics of these groups are somewhere in between those from both of the previous contests.

Roughly 3 in 10 (29%) double-haters identify as Democrats, similar to the 31% from 2020, and significantly more than the 21% from the Clinton-Trump matchup of 2016. These voters are, however, about as likely to identify as Republican as they were in 2016, following a decline in 2020. 

From an ideological standpoint, 2024’s double-haters are less likely to identify as liberal than they were four years ago (down from 38% to 25%), and more likely to identify as conservative (up from 25% to 38%). 

In generational terms, Gen Z adults, barely any of whom were eligible voters in 2016, are as well-represented among the double-haters as they were in 2020. Meanwhile, this year’s group is less likely to feature millennials than was true four years ago. The Gen X representation of double-haters has held steady over the past three presidential cycles, while baby boomers are back in force after a lighter presence of 2020.

The most striking contrast for 2024’s double-haters from 2020 and 2016 is gender: 58% of this year’s double-haters are women, up from 53% in 2020 and 51% in 2016.

At this very early stage of the 2024 cycle, Morning Consult tracking suggests that these voters are very much up for grabs, with many saying they’d vote for a third-party candidate if the election were held today.

Trump leads Biden by 1 percentage point (27% to 26%) among voters with an unfavorable view of both politicians, according to national surveys conducted Feb. 1-19, with even more (36%) saying they’d vote for “someone else” if the November election were held today. That “someone else” figure has already dropped from 40% in September. Nonetheless, it’s a very large figure and a likely illustration of the disillusionment Americans feel about their two likeliest choices this year.

At the top of this piece, we noted that 19% of voters nationwide have an unfavorable view of both Biden and Trump. According to our state-level tracking, it’s a similar story in the seven states that will decide the election, ranging from 22% in Arizona to 18% in Georgia.

Similarly, Biden and Trump are looking at similar margins among double-haters in these states.

Save for two states — Georgia and Nevada — double-haters in the battleground are currently more inclined to vote third party than to pick either of the likely Democratic or Republican nominees.

What it means for 2024

The biggest question regarding the double-haters that the Biden and Trump campaigns must grapple with ahead of November is whether these voters are serious about a third-party option, a query that also applies to the general electorate, roughly 1 in 10 of which says they wouldn’t vote Republican or Democratic if the election were today.

That’s another way that 2024 looks to be shaping up more like 2016, when 5.9% of the vote went away from the major party standard-bearers, than in 2020, when that figure was just 2.1%. 

How November’s third-party vote share ultimately shakes out isn’t entirely up to the Democratic and Republican parties. It’s possible that minor party candidates with significant ballot access could peel disaffected voters from either Trump or Biden. But for their campaigns, negative partisanship is likely to be the main pitch to keep that from happening to their detriment, and from that perspective, Biden may have the advantage.

While the double-haters’ extreme antipathy has grown toward Biden — and decreased toward Trump — since 2020, more still have a very unfavorable view of Trump, which could aid the Biden campaign down the homestretch.

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