Former President Donald Trump's contingency plan to run as a third-party candidate if he does not win the Republican presidential nomination is likely a non-starter thanks to "sore loser" laws in six states, Bloomberg reports.
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Alabama, Arkansas, and Texas have laws that prohibit a candidate who is defeated in a major-party primary from running as a third-party or independent candidate in the general election.
Meaning that, entering the general election, Trump would be down 91 votes of the 270 needed to win the White House.
The former president has suggested since 2016 that he would run on an independent or third-party ticket if he loses the GOP nomination.
While sore-loser laws would keep Trump's name off the ballot, voters could still write him in.
Presidential hopefuls who ran as third-party contenders or independents after losing a major-party primary include former President Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, U.S. Rep. John Anderson in 1980, and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson in 2012, according to Bloomberg. They all lost their respective White House bids.
A Trump campaign spokesperson told Bloomberg simply that he would win the GOP primary, when asked about the possibility of a third-party run splitting the Republican vote.
At the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday, Trump told reporters he would have to think about committing to a Republican National Committee pledge to support the presidential nominee because there are "people I wouldn't be very happy about endorsing."
In early polls, Trump is usually ahead or neck-and-neck with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has not yet declared if he is running; other potential challengers, including former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, remain in the single digits.
In a recent survey for The Bulwark, GOP pollster Whit Ayres found that 28% of Republican voters would vote for Trump if he ran as an independent in a three-way race with DeSantis and President Joe Biden.
Sore-loser laws are designed to prevent that exact scenario, using measures such as early filing deadlines, which make it difficult to launch such a campaign, to expressly barring candidates from appearing on the ballot.
Whether or not the laws apply to presidential candidates is not always clear, however.
"These laws have not really been scrutinized or tested because there hasn't been a significant case like this since John Anderson [in 1980]," Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Bloomberg. "My guess is if Trump tried this move, there'd be a lot of litigation."
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