Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has shown remarkable strength as a candidate in the Democratic Party primary, having consistently polled at double digits against incumbent Joe Biden. But Kennedy won’t be the Democratic Party nominee — even if Joe Biden drops out.
But that doesn’t mean that Kennedy won’t be a problem for the Democratic Party. Kennedy recently indicated that he may, in fact, launch an independent bid if the Democratic National Committee keeps trying to exclude him.
“They’re trying to make sure that I can’t participate at all in the political process, and so I’m going to keep all my options open,” Kennedy said at a campaign stop in South Carolina. He later elaborated at a stop in New Hampshire that he “would have to make a call before Oct. 15.”
So, what happens if he does run third party?
Well, for what it’s worth, a recent Rasmussen Reports survey found that as many as 38% of voters would consider voting for a third-party candidate in the event of a rematch between Trump and Biden. According to Rasmussen, that would be a political disaster for Joe Biden, as 33% of Democrat voters say they’d “likely” vote for Kennedy, including 14% who would “very likely” vote for him.
Would it really be that much? I’m not entirely convinced. But in a close election, which the 2024 presidential election is likely to be, Robert F. Kennedy would only need to get a small fraction of Democrat votes to be a spoiler for Biden. In the states that determined the outcome in 2020, the margin of victory was all less than 3 points:
- Michigan: 2.8 points
- Nevada: 2.4 points
- Pennsylvania: 1.2 points
- Arizona: 0.3 points
- Georgia: 0.2 points
As you can see, Kennedy wouldn’t need to siphon off a huge amount of votes to make a difference in the 2024 presidential election. The question is, would he really steal only from Biden, or would he steal some votes from Trump as well? Kennedy, for one, thinks he’s not a spoiler for Biden. In an interview with KNX News out of Los Angeles, Kennedy said he’d “take many more votes from President Trump than I do from President Biden.”
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Does he have a point? Despite polling in double digits in the Democratic primary, according to a FiveThirtyEight analysis of polls, Kennedy is actually more popular with Republican voters. Citing polls from a variety of polling outfits including Marquette, Ipsos/Reuters, Quinnipiac, Harvard/Harris, and Morning Consult, Kennedy has an average approval of -5 points with Democrats, and +28 points among Republicans, and his popularity within the Democratic Party has been declining over time.
Let’s face it, there are many voters in both the Democrat and Republican parties who aren’t all that enthused by the frontrunners for their party’s presidential nomination. How confident are you that in a close election, Kennedy won’t actually be a spoiler for Trump, not Biden?
