POLL: Justin Amash “Takes Away” More Votes From Joe Biden Than Donald Trump
Richard Moorhead
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New polling suggests that Libertarian Party Presidential candidate Justin Amash takes away more votes from Joe Biden than from Donald Trump, suggesting the appeal for a hardcore libertarian ideologue among Republican voters is slim to non-existent.
The Monmouth polling shows Trump polling two points closer to Joe Biden when Justin Amash is included as a poll option, a margin that was the approximate size of the popular vote in 2016.
Here’s the first round of polling, listing just Joe Biden and Donald Trump as general election choices:
And when Amash is included as a possible option:
The polling is far from definitive, and it’s not uncommon for presidential election polling the summer before the general election involving an incumbent to show the challenger leading. But it does appear that Amash has far greater appeal to nominal Democratic voters than to Republicans, whose party he abandoned in the name of defending Russian collusion conspiracies.
It’s possible that the appeal of Amash’s hardcore ideological libertarianism has waned in the eyes of the Republican voters. The former Republican came to Congress in the era of the 2010 Tea Party ascendancy, a movement that has since been surpassed in the Republican Party by Donald Trump’s nationalist ‘MAGA’ ideals.
Some Democrats have reacted with fury at the notion of Amash’s Libertarian Party campaign, demanding strict obedience of any nominal anti-Trump voter and fearing the stringent libertarian could “steal” votes from Joe Biden, a candidate with lower recorded enthusiasm levels than any Democratic presidential nominee has ever had.
If Amash has been secretly hoping to become an anti-Trump ‘spoiler’ with the ability to hand the election to Democrats, the Monmouth poll suggesting his appeal is greater to liberals might mean his vanity presidential campaign is essentially pointless.
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