With less than a week to go before Election Day, third-party presidential candidates still represent an unknown factor in key swing states, where dozens of Electoral College votes hang on a knife-edge and even 1% could make the difference.

Traumatized after third parties ate up Hillary Clinton’s vote share in 2016, Democrats launched an all-out court press early in the election cycle to bring down groups like No Labels and candidates like Jill Stein, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. of the Green Party to force. who ran as a Democrat before becoming an independent and then supporting former President Donald Trump and Cornel West.

The Democratic National Committee has invested millions of dollars to portray them as, at best, spoilsports and, at worst, deceptive agents of Republican deception efforts. Outside groups, including centrists and progressives, formed unconventional alliances to clear the way for a head-to-head matchup between Trump and President Joe Biden and eventual Vice President Kamala Harris.

The employees involved in the campaign were satisfied with the campaign. No Labels, once a centrist “unity ticket,” ultimately failed. Kennedy dropped out and aligned himself more closely with Trump, potentially hurting the former president in states where he remains on the ballot. And Stein and West are at the bottom of the polls.

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But no one rests on their laurels.

“Democrats take nothing for granted. “We learned the lessons of 2000 and 2016, when third-party candidates helped hand the White House to Republicans, and we will not allow that to happen again in 2024,” said Lis Smith, a DNC communications adviser for Third.

Still, “We won’t pat ourselves on the back, but we are satisfied that we took third-party threats seriously,” she said. “Earlier in this cycle, people talked non-stop about No Labels and RFK, Jr. But both of them either didn’t run or were completely uninvolved in this race because of the Democrats’ actions.”

Democrats were haunted by the 2000 and 2016 election results, when they claimed third-party candidates received enough swing state votes to deprive their candidates of victory. They decided that this danger would not go unnoticed this year.

The DNC created an internal group specifically designed to send messages against third-party candidates. Progressive groups like MoveOn and center-left organizations like Third Way joined forces to clear the way for Biden and later Harris to meet one-on-one against Trump.

A third-party No Labels “Unity ticket” was canceled after Democrats portrayed the effort as a spoiler and potential candidates lashed out against joining the crusade. Digital operations were shut down to quickly highlight controversial comments from candidates like Kennedy, Stein and West. Millions of dollars have been pumped into ads highlighting Republican activists’ support for supportive super PACs. And Democrats filed lawsuits to prevent other candidates from even getting a spot on swing state ballots.

Democrats now told ABC News they are glad their work made a difference.

Kennedy, partly because of Democrats’ efforts and partly because of his own views on issues like vaccines and COVID-19, was effectively seen as more aligned with Trump than with his family’s political legacy. While Stein was still on the ballot in six of seven swing states, she saw her support drop to normal levels because she feared frustrations with Biden would lead to a surge. And Democrats no longer view the West as a serious threat.

“There was another point in the race where No Labels, where RFK was stronger, where I think the threat was a little more existential. I think the threat is still a concern, but I think Democrats have worked hard to deliver to voters.” “The view that third-party candidates can be persuaded by third-party candidates is an alternative view of what these candidates are and also the risk associated with parking a protest vote with these candidates,” said Joel Payne, MoveOn’s chief communications officer.

“Third is certainly a factor, but I don’t know if it’s the same factor at this point in the race as it was, say, six, nine, 12 months ago.”

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Still, their existence on the ballot poses a risk to both parties, and there is little either can do about it.

Stein is on the ballot in elections in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The Supreme Court rejected Kennedy’s efforts to withdraw from the polls in Michigan and Wisconsin. Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver is also on most ballots.

Democrats can bash Stein all they want and Kennedy can cheer from the rooftops about his support for Trump, but activists said they were virtually guaranteed to win some marginal support. Ultimately, activists say, some voters are unwavering – and in elections won or lost by the margins, getting just 1% of the vote can make a difference.

“If you’re still a Jill Stein voter and you think it’s going to have an impact on the outcome that could help Trump, then we probably wouldn’t have gotten you in the end anyway. “So I think 1% is probably realistic, but if Chase Oliver gets 1%, that’s a Trump problem too,” said Jim Kessler, co-founder of Third Way.

Both parties may have particular concerns in Michigan — anger over Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza could drive some members of the state’s large Arab population away from Harris and toward Stone, and with Kennedy still on the ballot, he risks Trump’s Choice Take advantage of this dynamic.

A CNN/SSRS poll released Wednesday showed Kennedy with 3% of the vote in Michigan and Stein with 2%. West also polled at 1%, although Oliver did not receive enough support to register. In Wisconsin, Kennedy and Stein received 1% each, while Oliver and West did not register. In Pennsylvania, Stein and Oliver each received 1%.

“You’re going to get a few percentage points, and that could affect the outcome of a close election that all polls show will be very, very likely to be very close,” said nonpartisan Michigan pollster Bernie Porn.

And in an election cycle that has already seen the resignation of a president, two assassinations, 34 felony convictions and more, every question mark presents another opportunity for uncertainty.

“You could imagine someone playing spoilsport when the race is so close in many of these states,” said Republican pollster Robert Blizzard. “I don’t think Trump has ever topped 50 points in Pennsylvania, Michigan or Wisconsin before, and yet he has won those states at least once. And so, third parties, give a place to voters who are worried about Harris and tired of Trump.” But I just don’t know what role they’re going to play

Yet Democrats have been the party that has been most public about the threat that Stein and others pose and is loathe to relive their past traumas. And in the home stretch, activists who spoke to ABC News expressed satisfaction that the party had done as much as it could.

“What we can do at this point is make sure voters are just doing this out of laziness, that they know the implications of this decision. And in the end it’s up to the voters,” said Kessler. “I am satisfied that the effort is robust.”

Third-party candidates could be swing state spoilers, even after Democrats’ intense effort originally appeared on abcnews.go.com