Biden said the 2024 election is a binary choice. Millions of people don’t see it that way.

Even more people told pollsters they might just stay home in November.

The phenomenon poses a challenge for President Trump as well, and threatens to undermine Biden’s bid for a second term. Molly Murphy, a Democratic pollster who conducts surveys and focus groups to study these voters, said Biden is a candidate for voters who were alienated by the former president, making him the only palatable choice. He said that it may depend on whether it can be considered as such.

“Their feelings toward Trump are much more negative than their skepticism toward the president,” said Murphy, who was recently selected as a pollster for the Biden campaign. “But we need to convince them that if they don’t vote for the president, they’re effectively voting for Trump.”

The Trump campaign faces this danger in its own way. Many Republicans voted against Trump in the Republican primary. His campaign must convince them that their only option is to re-elect a president they deride as an old, feeble leftist.

In recent days, both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump have stepped up attacks on the other, calling it an existential threat to the nation. Asked to name the greatest threat to American freedom and democracy, Biden didn’t hesitate to say it was Trump.

“Donald Trump uses phrases like, ‘We’re going to gut the Constitution,'” Biden said in a Univision interview that aired Tuesday. “He will be a dictator from day one.”

Mr. Trump has suggested that Mr. Biden is allowing violent crime and illegal immigration to disrupt the country. “If we don’t win this election, this country is over,” he said at a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, last week.

The United States is unique among democracies in giving voters two choices in each election. Many countries have multiple political parties that can capture a share of power. But as Americans grow increasingly angry and dissatisfied with the U.S. political system, voters are shrinking from those choices and straining the binary system.

Polls show that about 20% of voters are considering third-party candidates, and many others are dissatisfied with the choice between Biden and Trump. And I’m looking for another option.

Pollsters and strategists on both sides say the biggest threat to Biden, who won 7 million more votes than Trump in 2020, is not that supporters will defect to Trump. Rather, if even a small portion of the electorate refuses to think of race in dichotomous terms, Biden’s chances of winning could be hampered by those who don’t vote for him or Trump.

The third-party option is particularly worrying to Democratic operatives, many of whom believe that the past two Republican presidents made it to the Oval Office simply because liberal voters in crisis states made it to the Oval Office in 2000. And I believe it’s only because they didn’t view the 2016 election through the lens of two major parties and instead chose a two-party system. Which Green Party candidate, Ralph Nader or Jill Stein, felt represented their views better?

This year, Democrats launched a fierce campaign to discredit leading third-party candidates, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Stein and academic Cornel West. The centrist group No Labels’ recent failure to find its own candidate comes after it came under chilling attacks from Biden supporters.

Biden campaign officials say that will change once voters start paying more attention to the race.

“The defining characteristic of voters right now is that they’re still not paying attention to the election,” said Meg Schwentzfeier, the Biden campaign’s chief analyst. “While they’re watching, a lot of what we have to do is advocate on all sides for what’s at stake in the election.”

Schwentzfeier added that many floating voters are still not convinced that Trump, who faces 91 criminal charges, will be the Republican nominee. Mr. Biden’s allies have sought in recent weeks to elevate Mr. Trump’s most extreme statements, emphasizing his statements on restricting abortion, conducting mass deportations and targeting political opponents. .

And when Biden is faced with questions about his own vulnerabilities (age, war in Gaza, immigration, etc.), he often responds by essentially saying Trump would be worse off.

“You should look at the other person,” Biden, 81, told comedian Seth Meyers in February when asked about his age. “He’s my age and I can’t even remember his wife’s name,” said Trump, 77.

Mr. Biden also criticized Mr. Trump on foreign policy, responding to criticism over his handling of the Gaza war. Asked in January if he was worried about losing support among Arab Americans, Biden said, “The former president wants to ban Arabs from entering the country. We’re going to make sure we understand what we’re putting into it.”

Trump and his allies are also using a binary framework to try to convince skeptical Republicans that a second term for Biden is unacceptable. Republicans who have previously criticized Trump for the January 6, 2021, riot and other issues, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), have expressed disdain for Biden. He explained his decision to support Trump by emphasizing that.

But not all disaffected Republicans are ready to grit their teeth and vote for Trump. Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at Trinity Forum, a Christian think tank who served in three Republican administrations, recently suggested that conservative Republicans could form a new party.

“Trump is a threat to our country and our Constitution in a different way than Joe Biden,” Wehner said in an interview. “And Mr. Trump is destroying the Republican Party in a way that Mr. Biden could never do.”

Brian Lanza, a Republican strategist who advised Trump’s 2016 campaign, said the momentum that destroyed Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign could be repeated, with many voters dissatisfied with Biden staying home. I predicted it would be deafening. “They’re totally ready to vote for Trump, but they’re looking for other options.”

Mr. Biden’s aides strongly oppose this, and are stepping up efforts to reach out to so-called “double haters” who dislike both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump. Aides say internal campaign data shows this group is disproportionately made up of young voters, people of color and voters who are disengaged from politics.

Aides emphasized that the campaign spent $25 million on advertising last year and $30 million this spring. While last year’s ads focused primarily on Biden’s performance, recent ads have focused on the stark contrast with Trump.

One ad released by the Biden campaign on Monday features an emotional account of a woman who developed sepsis and nearly died after being denied medical assistance for a miscarriage due to Texas’ abortion restrictions. “Donald Trump did this,” the ad says.

Another ad, titled “Only One Choice,” published in Spanish media explains the election choice in simple terms: Biden or Trump.

Biden’s team says the strategy is already working, citing recent polls that show Biden in the lead or ahead of Trump, but other polls show a close race. is shown to have remained almost unchanged.

But analysts said negative views on both sides risked alienating voters already disillusioned with the rematch between Biden and Trump. Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley said the 2024 campaign was “toxic” and that “voters have turned away from this whole carnival of bad-ass political dysfunction.” “There is a tendency to put it away,” he said.

At Bethune-Cookman University, a historically black school in Daytona Beach, Florida, many students have expressed dismay about “the fact that they will be faced with the same choices again” in the 2024 election. Mr. Chideste Youssef, who serves as a teacher and advisor, spoke. Political action groups on campus.

Her students — the young, minority, politically active voters the Biden campaign relies on — are listening to the two major candidates speak out on issues they care about. She says she often feels like she doesn’t have one.

“You don’t see people energetically saying, ‘I’m voting for Trump,’ but you definitely don’t automatically go, ‘Oh my god, did you hear what he said?'” I’m definitely going to vote for Biden,” she said. “It’s more like, ‘Oh, neither of them are doing anything that benefits me.'”

Youssef says the war in Gaza has only reinforced feelings of disappointment. Yousef is Muslim and struggles with the same feelings of insecurity as some of his students. “It’s very difficult for me to want to still make the choice to vote for Biden, even though I know what a Trump presidency would look like,” she said.

The protests over Biden’s handling of the Gaza war are perhaps the most obvious example of voters rejecting the premise of a binary 2024 campaign. In states with large Arab-American populations, such as Michigan and Minnesota, voters waged an ambitious and coordinated effort to withhold their votes for Biden in the recent Democratic primaries, with tens of thousands of people voting instead. I chose “non-commit”.

Biden’s campaign expects many of these voters to support the president in the fall, but some Democrats worry they will simply stay home.

The dire situation in Gaza, where more than 33,000 people have been killed and thousands more are on the brink of starvation, is a thorny liability for the Biden campaign. On October 7, Israel launched a military operation in Gaza after Hamas militants killed around 1,200 Israelis, including many civilians, and took more than 250 hostages.

Biden has recently ramped up pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to prevent civilian casualties and allow more aid to the Gaza Strip, but many activists believe Biden is trying to win back votes. suggests that more effort is needed.

Eva Borgwart, a field organizer for Biden’s 2020 campaign in Arizona, said the binary framework adopted by Biden suggests he should do more to rein in the Israeli government. He said it does not explain the deep anger of voters.

“As someone who worked hard to get votes for Mr. Biden in 2020, I know how important motivation is to winning a general election,” said IfNotNow, a Jewish group opposed to Israeli operations in Gaza. said Borgwald, a spokesperson for . “I fear Trump, which is why he is willing to risk voters feeling unheard and staying home, given his continued support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attacks on Palestinians in Gaza. They’re furious at Biden for being there.”

Leigh Ann Caldwell contributed to this report.