Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is enjoying a new burst of attention after unveiling his choice of running mate on Tuesday, entrepreneur and lawyer Nicole Shanahan.
Shanahan’s wealth — she is the ex-wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin — has already aided Kennedy, in part because she helped pay for the Super Bowl ad that backed his candidacy.
Her largesse could also help Kennedy with a central question facing him — how to get on the ballot in as many states as possible?
The candidate remains adamant that he can make the ballot everywhere. So far, his campaign only claims to have met the criteria in four states. The super PAC backing him, American Values, contends it has gathered enough signatures to get him on the ballot in another four.
Notably, those eight states in total include four of the battlegrounds that will likely decide the election: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Nevada.
Virtually nobody beyond Kennedy’s fervent supporters believes he has even a slight chance of becoming the next president. Instead, the key issue is whether he hurts President Biden or former President Trump more.
The answer, so far, is Biden — but by a very small margin and with several caveats.
First and foremost, the bulk of polling — both nationally and in the key states — shows Trump’s advantage over Biden widening slightly when Kennedy’s name is included.
In the polling average maintained by The Hill and Decision Desk HQ, for example, Trump leads Biden in a one-on-one match-up by a negligible margin: roughly half a percentage point.
But the former president has a 2-point advantage over Biden when Kennedy is listed as an option.
The same pattern is seen in numerous state-level polls. An Emerson College poll in Michigan last month showed Trump up by 2 points without Kennedy’s name being listed, and by 4 points when it was. In Wisconsin, another Emerson poll had Trump expanding his lead to 4 points from 3 points when Kennedy was listed.
The reasons why Kennedy might appeal to Democrats are fairly straightforward, beginning with his last name.
The son of the former New York senator of the same name, who was assassinated while seeking the presidency in 1968, and the nephew of former President Kennedy has a ready base of goodwill to draw upon. That is especially true with the many voters who haven’t paid close enough attention yet to know that many members of the Kennedy family oppose his candidacy.
“The main reason is the Kennedy name,” said Scott Tranter, the director of data science for Decision Desk HQ. “They see the Kennedy name and they think, ‘Well, I like the Kennedys and I’m not sure I’m wild about Biden.’”
Kennedy began his 2024 campaign seeking the Democratic nomination. While that quest went nowhere, he holds positions that align with the bulk of the party when it comes to the environment, raising the minimum wage, easing student loan debt and strengthening labor laws.
Importantly, too, Kennedy has some fertile ground to plow among disaffected Democrats, given the widespread concern about Biden’s age and his ability to effectively serve through a second term.
But that’s far from the whole story.
There is an apparent contradiction at the heart of polling on Kennedy.
Despite his seeming capacity to increase Trump’s edge, he is seen much more favorably by Republicans than Democrats.
In a new Economist/YouGov poll released Wednesday, for example, Kennedy was viewed favorably by 52 percent of Republicans but by only 25 percent of Democrats.
Several possible reasons could explain this.
Firstly, Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism resonates more powerfully with conservatives than with liberals. The same is true, at least to some degree, about his views on the war in Ukraine.
More generally, his critiques of Biden and willingness to run against him, as well as his rhetorical attacks on the shady forces of the political, media and medical establishments clearly have at least some overlap with the MAGA worldview.
Democrats and Biden allies have stepped up their efforts to neutralize the threat from Kennedy in recent weeks.
Trump, meanwhile, blasted him in a social media post Wednesday morning as “the most Radical Left candidate in the race, by far.”
But the former president went on to make one of his forays into election punditry, musing, “I guess this would mean he is going to be taking votes from [Biden], which would be a great service to America.”
“I love that he is running!” Trump concluded.
There is one further doubt about Kennedy’s impact on this year’s race.
As Tranter and other experts note, third-party candidates often significantly underperform their polling numbers as voters, hovering over their ballots, ask themselves hard questions about viability.
“People want to vote for a winner,” Tranter said.
That pattern could curb Kennedy’s impact.
But even if he fails to notch up a result reflecting his current support in polls, at around 10 percent, he could still matter in an election that both major parties expect to be very close.
That’s good news — with some reservations — for Trump.
The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.
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