Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is expected to influence the outcome of the 2024 rematch between former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, but it remains to be seen whether he will receive more support from anyone. It is not yet clear whether they will be collected.
Since Kennedy switched his party affiliation from Democrat to independent in October, polls have mostly shown him to be more of a threat to Biden’s campaign than Trump. However, several recent polls have found that the presence of independents on the ballot is hindering Trump’s candidacy, making it difficult to predict who Kennedy will ultimately collect votes from in November. Doubts are growing. (Related: Democratic megadonor involved in Epstein-funded effort to remove RFK Jr. from vote)
“Kennedy has had a more lasting impact on this race than most people realized,” said John McHenry, a Republican polling analyst and vice president of North Star Opinion Research. I think so,” he told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The only places he really needs to be on are Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, some states, North Carolina, maybe Michigan, Wisconsin. He needs to be on the ballot to have an impact on this issue. There are only five or six states. Even if you only get 3%, that’s enough to sway a lot of states.”
NBC News investigation Reports released Sunday said Trump had a two-point lead in a head-to-head matchup with the president, but Kennedy, Justice for All Party candidate Cornel West and Green Party candidate Jill Stein were ahead. Because of his inclusion in the polls, there was a 4-point lead in the election to Biden. . Kennedy received 13% of his stock.
The next day, Marist poll In a two-way race, Biden led Trump by 51% to 48%. The votes of Kennedy, West and Stein widened the president’s lead to 5 points, and support among independents reached 14%.
quinnipiac investigation The magazine, published Wednesday, shows that Kennedy’s presence on the ballot also didn’t help Trump, with the two remaining candidates tied in both the two-way and five-way races, with an independent. The group received 16% of the vote. The March version is poll It showed that Trump is benefiting from a multi-candidate matchup.
Nationally, Trump’s lead over Biden is still slightly larger because the RealClearPolitics (RCP) average includes Kennedy and other third-party candidates; shift from 0.3 to 0.9 points.
in arizona, nevada, north carolina, georgia and pennsylvania, Trump’s chances increase in a five-way race, according to RCP averages. Conversely, former presidents’ returns decline in battleground states. wisconsin and michigan.
According to RCP averages, Kennedy currently holds support between 6.3% and 10.5% in all seven battleground states.
On October 22, 2020, US President Donald Trump (Republican), Democratic presidential candidate, former US Vice President Joe Biden and moderator NBC News attended the final presidential debate held at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. Anchor Kristen Welker (Republican) joins us. Jim Burg/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
Pollsters and strategists who spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation argue that the complexity of Kennedy’s candidacy makes it difficult to predict who will garner more support.
“It’s not surprising that he seems to be taking votes away from one candidate and then another, because people don’t know whether they’re going to vote for Trump or Biden or RFK. There’s going to be a lot of movement around those three answers, depending on the news of the day, because that’s what’s happening in the district among people who are thinking about it.” Republican strategist Mike McKenna said. told DCNF.
“You see in a normal election, a two-person election, you see swings back and forth between the candidates, right? You know, it’s just those two, and it tends to be a zero-sum game,” McKenna said. added. “But now…mathematically it’s a little more complicated.”
Many believe that Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016 was due to Stein’s presence on the ballot in key states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all of which Trump lost by less than 1 percentage point. won by a difference of .
Kyle Kondik, a nonpartisan polling analyst and editor-in-chief of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, said Kennedy’s “complex” candidacy remains an “unresolved question” about who Kennedy will siphon more votes from. I think this is one of the reasons why it is a problem.
“On the one hand, he has the last name of one of the most famous Democratic families of the last century, so you would naturally think that he would leave the Democratic Party, and to some extent that is probably the case,” Kondik told DCNF. Ta. “But his actual public persona is basically anti-establishment, very critical of public health authorities and in some ways critical of the government, even if he Even if you criticize it from a left-leaning perspective, perhaps the current message of the Republican Party fits better than that of the Democratic Party.”
Mr. McHenry still believes Mr. Kennedy has “hurt both candidates about equally,” but warned Republicans about running independents.
“He’s been kind of a darling for Republicans for a while because he’s an anti-vaxxer. And he’s like, ‘Yeah, he’s a Democrat running against Biden, that’s great!'” You go out and get a progressive vice presidential candidate and they say, “Oh, wait, is he really a liberal?” Well, actually, he is,” McHenry told DCNF. “This tacit permission to vote for RFK Jr. could ultimately backfire.”
On March 26, President Kennedy announced that his running mate would be Nicole Shanahan, a Silicon Valley lawyer. Mr. Shanahan has a long history of donating to Democratic campaigns and causes.playing cards I took it The day after Kennedy’s announcement, Truth Social called Shanahan “even more liberal than he is, if that’s possible.”
“Kennedy is and always will be a radical leftist Democrat!!!” Great for MAGA, but the communists are going to make it very difficult for him to get on the ballot.”Trump he wrote at the time. “Expect him and her to be indicted now, possibly for environmental fraud! He’s a crooked Joe Biden political opponent, not mine. I love you!”
Kondik echoed some of McHenry’s sentiments, warning that “both sides should view RFK as a threat.”
“I think the Biden campaign probably tried to act on this issue more than the Trump campaign,” Kondik said. “perhaps [the recent polling is] It’s kind of a wake-up call for the Trump campaign to start worrying about RFK as well, you know, and I know the Biden people are worried about him and have been for a while. ”
The Biden campaign, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and various other allies have already opposed Kennedy’s candidacy over concerns that he would draw more support from the president’s base than Trump. We have begun efforts to do so.
For example, the DNC has launched a coalition of lawyers to oversee how independent and third-party candidates can ensure access to the ballot. The committee also filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in February against a pro-Kennedy super PAC for helping collect signatures from independents.
Clear Choice PAC, Founded Biden’s former deputy campaign manager Pete Kavanaugh hired former Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Mark Brewer to challenge Kennedy’s position on the battleground state’s vote. according to Go to Detroit News.
Although the Trump campaign has largely refrained from criticizing Kennedy, its super PAC, MAGA, has recently stepped up its criticism of Kennedy, with the aim of portraying Kennedy as more left-leaning. ing. super PAC launched website of the title On April 15th, “Radical F—ing Kennedy” expressed his liberal views on taxes, guns, climate change, and more.
“We intend to spoil both President Biden and President Trump,” Stephanie Speer, a spokeswoman for the Kennedy campaign, told DCNF in a statement.
“We’re also going to be spoilers for the war machine, Wall Street, Big Agriculture, Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Energy, and corporate media,” Spear said. “Americans don’t have to settle for the uninspiring choices that the Democratic and Republican establishments give us. This is an election where voting for the lesser of two evils ends. For the first time in decades, , a strong independent candidate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was pitted against two deeply unpopular opponents.The American political system no longer operates on a binary system. isn’t it.”
Still, some people who spoke to DCNF believed that independents were more of a threat to Biden than Trump, and McKenna said Kennedy’s candidacy was an important factor in the president’s re-election bid. It said it was likely to result in a “very modest, substantial negative impact.”
John McLaughlin, President Trump’s pollster and CEO of McLaughlin & Associates, said, referring to President Trump’s ongoing criminal trial in New York, “Our biggest challenge right now is… The concern has to remain with Joe Biden, because Joe Biden is going to put us in jail,” he told DCNF. “In a multi-candidate race, we still have the lead because we have the strongest ground and the most passionate supporters, but Biden’s strategy has shifted away from discussing issues in battleground states. ”
Mr. McLaughlin’s recent national views poll An April 17 announcement found that Mr. Trump leads Mr. Biden 49% to 45% in a head-to-head race. Including Kennedy and other third-party candidates, the former president’s lead narrowed to two points.
The Democratic pollster and redistricting consultant, who focuses on working-class racial minorities, is given anonymity to freely speak about race, but Mr. Kennedy is campaigning as an independent. When I first started, it was a “Trump spoiler,” but I think it’s now a “Biden spoiler.”
“Slowly over time, his Democratic views, traditional Democratic views became more and more apparent, and he became more and more irritating to Republicans,” pollsters told DCNF. Ta. “We all thought he was going to take votes away from Trump. Then when he started doing that, he made himself a rebel against the Republican Party.”
Neither the Trump nor Biden campaigns responded to DCNF’s requests for comment.
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