One of

the biggest threats to Joe Biden's re-election is a viable third-party candidate. In fact, Democratic strategist Doug Sosnick has gone so far as to state that Trump can't win without a third-party candidate dividing the anti-Trump vote. It wouldn't take much for a third party to have a big impact. In 2020, the election was decided by fewer than 40,000 votes in three swing states. But in 2024, third-party fever seems to be on the rise. Already, Cornell West, RFK Jr., and Jill Stein are running. Then, there's the quixotic movement known as No Labels, which has cited a stream of polling data arguing that a large majority of Americans are crying out for an alternative to Trump and Biden. The man producing those polls is Mark Penn, best known for two things. His devotion to centrist politics and his longtime role as the top pollster and strategist for Bill and Hillary Clinton. Penn's wife, Nancy Jacobson, runs No Labels, and Penn provides the data that she uses to support her project. Penn reports that 64 percent of voters say the country needs another choice if it's a Biden-Trump rematch, and that most voters would consider a moderate, independent candidate as an alternative to the current president and the former president. Not surprisingly, Mark and Nancy's work has infuriated Democrats, who are spending money to discredit them, sue No Labels, thwart the group's voter registration efforts, and pressure its affiliates. So what does Mark Penn think about all of this? We're going to ask him. I'm Ryan Lizza, and this is Playbook Deep Dive. Mark Penn ascended through politics as a close ally of the Clinton family. He held senior roles for Bill's 1996 re-election, as well as Hillary's 2008 campaign. And then had an epic falling out. Now, he runs a large marketing and communications firm called Stagwell, and he publishes the Harvard Caps Harris poll, which he seems to be using to troll both Democrats and Republicans. He's been asking lots of questions that either Trump or Biden don't want to talk about, from how the public perceives Joe Biden's physical acuity, poorly, to whether voters will care about a possible criminal conviction for Trump. It depends. To how strong of an appetite there actually is for a third-party challenger. Penn's work amounts to a strategic map for anyone who might want to dismantle Trump or Biden's candidacy. And conveniently, his wife Nancy just happens to have a third party that is searching for a nominee. To freaked out Democrats, no labels swears it will not use that platform to help elect Trump. Though that looks like an empty promise to Biden allies watching the likes of Joe Manchin, Larry Hogan, and others flirting with the no labels opportunity. I caught up with Penn this week while I was on the road in New Hampshire, and he was in Miami Beach. We talked about the GOP primary results, his controversial polls, his real relationship with no labels, and why he thinks that Nikki Haley may still have a big role to play in this year's election. Mark, let's talk about third parties and some of the polling on third parties.