Democratic voters are five times more likely to vote for an independent candidate on the 2020 ballot than Republican voters, according to a new poll released on Tuesday.
The study said that if a third-party challenger were to run, President Trump would win the 2020 election, whereas he would lose if the race were a two-person choice.
Respondents were first asked to choose between Mr. Trump and a Democratic candidate, and then asked if they would change their vote to an independent candidate should they be included. Democrats were more likely to flip than Republicans by a five-to-one margin.
“The Democrats’ visceral reaction to a potential Howard Schultz run doesn’t look like an overreaction,” said Rachel Bitecofer, assistant director of the Wason Center. “A five-to-one defection rate is cause for alarm.”
Mr. Schultz, former CEO of Starbucks, is running as an independent in the 2020 presidential race.
The study was conducted by the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University by interviewing 1,000 people with a 3.2 percent margin of error.
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