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If a third-party presidential candidate were going to have a spoiler effect anywhere in 2020, it would seem to be in Michigan, after Representative Justin Amash, a five-term congressman from Grand Rapids, said this week he was preparing a bid for the Libertarian nomination in the November election.
In 2016, after all, Donald J. Trump won Michigan by just 10,700 votes — and the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson, won 172,000 votes in the state. Mr. Amash’s likely entry into the race, as a native son in a state that is again likely to be a battleground, gave some Democrats and Never Trump Republicans overnight heart palpitations.
Nonetheless, strategists from both major parties in Michigan said on Wednesday that this year’s electoral landscape was so fundamentally altered from four years ago that Mr. Amash was not likely to have a major impact in the state, or on the general election as a whole. If Mr. Trump’s surprising victories in Northern industrial states in 2016 were based on high levels of dislike for the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, which depressed Democratic turnout, those appear to be lesser factors this time around as he prepares to face Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Mr. Amash, who was the sole Republican to support impeachment before leaving the party last year to become an independent, said in an interview that he was not worried about easing the president’s path to a second term.
“A lot of the hype in that direction is based on a few people who are well-known former Republicans, who are supporting Joe Biden, and they falsely assume that everyone must be like them,” he said. “I think actually a lot of people who like Biden but are Republicans will still vote for Trump because he’s closer to their policies.”
Greg McNeilly, a Republican strategist in Michigan, said that Mr. Amash’s candidacy would pull some support from Mr. Biden, but that this was not likely to make up enough for Mr. Trump’s fundamental challenges in the state this year.
“No doubt, in almost any model for the Democrats, more choices is a bad outcome,” he said. “They want the election to be a referendum on the president. More choices splits up the opposition.”
But Mr. McNeilly, who lives in Mr. Amash’s House district in Western Michigan, said the deciding factor this year would be how large a share of its base each party is able to turn out — and that formulation favors Mr. Biden, a more popular candidate with Democrats than Mrs. Clinton was when she lost the state by just 0.3 percentage points.
“Trump didn’t win Michigan in 2016; she lost it,” Mr. McNeilly said, referring to Mrs. Clinton, the first Democratic presidential candidate to lose the state in a generation.
To be sure, the election is six months away, with a strong likelihood that the race will take unforeseen twists as the country grapples with a pandemic and a reeling economy.
But few other states Mr. Trump won in 2016 appear as forbidding for him as Michigan, where a raft of recent public and private surveys show him losing by more than five points. Some of his challenge in the state owes to the acceleration of suburban voters away from the Republican Party in places like Mr. Amash’s district, parts of which were once represented by that avatar of business-friendly moderation, former President Gerald R. Ford.
Although partisans of both parties are highly motivated to vote in 2020, there are simply more Democrats than Republicans in Michigan, giving Mr. Biden a decided edge.
“The big question to ask is, ‘Does Amash make any difference if Democratic motivation is as high as it appears to be in Michigan?’” said Richard Czuba, a nonpartisan pollster in the state. “I don’t think it does.”
Mr. Czuba asks voters in surveys to rate their motivation to vote on a 10-point scale. In 2016, he said, it was 6.5, the lowest he had ever measured for a presidential race. Early this year, Democratic motivation was 9.3 or higher.
“If there’s an uptick in motivation, it clearly benefits the Democrats,” Mr. Czuba said.
A poll Mr. Czuba conducted last June for The Detroit News found that in a three-way race, Mr. Amash won 10 percent of the vote in Michigan, and that he cut Mr. Biden’s lead over Mr. Trump to six points, compared with a 12-point Biden lead in a two-candidate race. The Biden defectors were independent, Libertarian-leaning men.
But on Wednesday, Mr. Czuba warned not to read too much into those 10-month-old results. Third-party candidates usually poll better the further out from an election, then fade.
“Everybody likes the idea of casting a ballot of protest, but when push comes to shove, they want their vote to mean something,” he said. He called 2016 “the ultimate protest year.”
Four years ago, a number of voters who were contemptuous of both candidates assumed Mrs. Clinton would win and supported the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson, viewing him as something of a place holder they could back without consequence. Now, of course, Mr. Trump is running as an incumbent president — and voters will go to the polls amid a pandemic that has already killed over 50,000 people and torpedoed the economy.
Brandon Dillon, a former chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, conceded that Mr. Amash was attractive to some Democratic-leaning independents. But he predicted that appeal would wane closer to November.
“The further you get away from impeachment — the one thing Justin Amash did that a lot of Democrats appreciated — the less the impact his candidacy will have on what will be truly a referendum on President Trump,” Mr. Dillon said.
“If Hillary Clinton was the candidate, it would be more significant,” he added. “But I just don’t see that kind of defection from Joe Biden.”
In Mr. Czuba’s poll shortly before the Michigan primary on March 10, Democrats were asked if there were any candidates they would not vote for in November. Mr. Biden inspired the fewest defections, only 5 percent. The former vice president won Michigan decisively over Senator Bernie Sanders, in a race that broke Democratic turnout records by more than 30 percent.
“This idea that’s being peddled that Sanders voters aren’t going to vote for Joe Biden, that’s not holding up in polling of Michigan,” Mr. Czuba said.
It is also possible that Mr. Amash will attract some share of disgruntled Republicans. This is especially likely in Western Michigan, a region of socially conservative voters, who know Mr. Amash as someone committed to their principles.
Mr. McNeilly noted that in 2016 in Western Michigan, there was a 60,000-person “undervote” of those who voted for down-ballot candidates but skipped the line for president. Many were Republicans who didn’t like Mr. Trump, he said.
Most have become reluctant Trump supporters, because of his policies and their dislike of his critics, he added. But now there is another choice who could lure them away from Mr. Trump: Mr. Amash, “someone they know is of good moral character who’s an alternative,” Mr. McNeilly said.
Places like Grand Rapids and surrounding Kent County have become ripe targets for Democrats in the Trump era. After Mrs. Clinton lost the county by 3.1 percentage points, the Michigan Democrats on top of the ticket in 2018 both carried Kent County. Senator Debbie Stabenow eked out a narrow victory there, while Gov. Gretchen Whitmer won by about four points.
The Libertarian candidate for governor captured 1.7 percent of the vote.
Reid J. Epstein contributed reporting.
