Who will RFK Jr. hurt more in 2024: Trump or Biden?
What’s happening
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is running for president as an independent — and both Democrats and Republicans are worried that he could “spoil” the election by siphoning more votes from one side than the other.
Kennedy did not meet CNN's threshold — garnering 15% support in four reliable national polls by June 20 — to qualify for Thursday night's presidential debate.
At first, the thinking was that RFK Jr.'s candidacy posed a bigger threat to President Biden than to his Republican rival, former President Donald Trump.
“He is Crooked Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, not mine,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in March. “I love that he is running!”
Trump’s logic wasn’t hard to follow. Kennedy’s father was Democratic icon Robert F. Kennedy, a U.S. attorney general and senator who was shot and killed just as he was closing in on his party’s 1968 presidential nomination. Kennedy’s uncle, John F. Kennedy, was one of the most beloved Democratic presidents of the 20th century. He was assassinated, too.
A lifelong Democrat, RFK Jr. spent much of his career as an environmental lawyer fighting large corporate polluters. (He later pivoted to anti-vaccine activism.) Last year, he chose to challenge Biden in the 2024 Democratic primary before deciding to pursue the presidency as an independent instead.
In recent weeks, however, something seems to have shifted, and Republicans who initially welcomed Kennedy’s bid (at least one of whom became his top donor) have started to openly disparage him.
“RFK Jr. is a Democrat ‘Plant,’ a Radical Left Liberal who’s been put in place in order to help Crooked Joe Biden,” Trump wrote last Friday on Truth Social. “A Vote for Junior’ would essentially be a WASTED PROTEST VOTE.”
So how big a factor could Kennedy be in November? And who should be more afraid of him, Trump or Biden?
Why there’s debate
The 2024 election is almost certain to be very close. For months, the Yahoo News/YouGov poll has shown Biden and Trump locked in a statistical tie; a few thousands votes in key swing states could tip the White House one way or the other.
At the same time, voters have made it abundantly clear that they’re unhappy with having to choose — again — between Biden and Trump, who both suffer from historically low approval ratings.
Kennedy is trying to capitalize on Americans’ discontent. So far, polls suggest he is doing a decent job. The numbers vary from survey to survey, but he has consistently averaged about 10% support nationwide, with slightly lower — but still substantial — backing in the battleground states.
No independent or third-party candidate has hit double digits on Election Day since businessman Ross Perot in 1992, so it makes sense for Kennedy’s rivals to be concerned.
Adding to their fear, experts say, is the sense that Kennedy is uniquely positioned to poach from both sides.
“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has two things going for him. One is a Democratically known last name, which could play to low-informed Democratic voters who are looking for an additional option beyond Biden,” Republican strategist Matthew Bartlett recently told Politico. “But beyond that, he has a lot of interesting if not conspiratorial ideas, from vaccines to autism to a wide range of fringe ideas that certainly play more to the right than to the left.”
Reinforcing the latter point, Yahoo News and YouGov recently tested five false conspiracy theories that Kennedy has promoted — and without mentioning the candidate’s name, all five generated far more agreement among Trump voters than among Biden voters: that COVID-19 vaccines are more harmful than the virus itself (55% vs. 8%); that climate change is being used as a pretext for imposing totalitarian controls on society (68% vs. 7%); that Prozac and other antidepressants have led to a rise in school shootings (35% vs. 12%); that vaccines cause autism (25% vs. 5%); and that chemicals in the water supply could turn children transgender (8% vs. 4%).
For now, the Yahoo News/YouGov poll suggests that Kennedy pulls equally from Trump and Biden, who are tied at 44% apiece among registered voters in a head-to-head matchup and 42% apiece against a full field of alternatives (including Kennedy at 5%, up from 2% earlier this year).
But at least one other recent survey, by NBC News, found Biden coming from 2 points behind to lead Trump by 2 when Kennedy and two other third-party candidates were added as options — largely because 15% of respondents who initially picked Trump against Biden defected to Kennedy in the five-way matchup (vs. just 7% of those who initially chose Biden).
Elsewhere, an April CNN poll showed Kennedy with a much higher favorable rating among Trump voters (42% favorable vs. 16% unfavorable) than among Biden voters (19% favorable vs. 53% unfavorable), while a Politico analysis revealed that Kennedy has raised about twice as much money from 2020 Trump donors than from 2020 Biden donors.
Both of these data points suggest that Kennedy’s candidacy might have more upside on the right than on the left. But whether the candidate himself ever manages to transform that potential into votes — and whether those votes are plentiful enough to affect the outcome in November — remains to be seen.
What’s next
The main factor that will determine the size and scope of Kennedy’s impact is ballot access, which isn’t guaranteed to independent candidates running outside the party system.
To date, Kennedy’s campaign has managed to collect the requisite signatures and jump through the requisite hoops in only four states: Utah, Michigan, Hawaii and (as of Wednesday) California.
Utah is a solid red state; Hawaii and California are solidly blue. But Michigan could be tight enough for Kennedy to swing — and it’s unlikely to have that category all to itself.
According to CBS News, “Kennedy's campaign says it has completed signature gathering in … Nevada, Idaho… New Hampshire, North Carolina, Nebraska and Iowa” — while a “super PAC supporting Kennedy, American Values 2024, says it has collected enough signatures in Arizona, Georgia and South Carolina.”
Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia were all decided by narrow margins in 2020.
And “I think [Kennedy] has a very good chance of getting onto all 50 ballots," Bernard Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University who studies third parties, told CBS. "It looks like he's on track for it."
To prepare for that possibility — and for the uncertainty about which side Kennedy will hurt more — Democrats have been rolling out Biden endorsements from Kennedy family members and aggressively linking RFK Jr. to Trump, while Trump is trying to encourage liberals to vote for Kennedy instead of Biden.
“If I were a Democrat, I’d vote for RFK Jr. every single time over Biden, because he’s frankly more in line with Democrats,” Trump said last month.
Kennedy, meanwhile, seems to be reveling in his newfound relevance. "Our campaign is a spoiler,” he said in March. “I agree with that. It's a spoiler for President Biden and for President Trump.”
Perspectives
To be clear: Kennedy has no chance of winning the presidency.
“Under our system, electoral votes are awarded winner-take-all to the candidate who gets the most votes in each state, with the exception of Maine and Nebraska. That means there is no prize for second place. So unless you can actually win a plurality in the state, your impact on a race is likely to be just pulling votes away from the other candidates. Now, that could change at any point. Kennedy and West are trying. But opinion polls so far do not show them with a clear shot at winning any state.” — Michael Scherer, Washington Post
And polls are probably overstating Kennedy’s support.
“Historical precedent … suggests that third-party and independent candidates’ election performances rarely live up to their polling. ... Those who treat being polled as an opportunity to vent their discontent with the system – are likely to far outnumber those who are fully committed to backing a specific alternative." — Ariel Edwards-Levy, CNN
Kennedy just is looking for money and attention — and MAGA voters are better targets.
“It appears the more voters learn about Kennedy — that he's anti-vaccine, a conspiracy theorist, and an all-around weirdo — the more Democrats are turned off and the more MAGA voters are intrigued. ... If you're looking for gullible people who will give you money to lie to them, you will be far more successful appealing to Trump voters than Biden voters.” — Amanda Marcotte, Salon
But Democrats still seem more spooked than Republicans.
“If Kennedy and [his running mate, tech entrepreneur Nicole] Shanahan represent a bigger threat to Trump, why are Democrats trying to get them to quit the race? The Kennedy-Shanahan ticket is a wild card, and it’s possible their primary appeal is to voters who aren’t particularly interested in supporting either Biden or Trump. But right now, a lot of Democrats are acting like Kennedy and Shanahan will hurt Biden’s campaign more.” — Jim Geraghty, National Review
And Trump — unlike Biden — has always relied on third-party candidates to eke out a win.
“Trump’s campaign isn’t premised on winning a majority, something a Republican has managed only once in the past eight presidential elections, (George W. Bush in 2004). Trump took 46% in 2016 and 47% in 2020. His campaign’s best bet is to sufficiently hold Biden’s vote down in the key swing states to allow 46% or 47% to prevail. That scenario requires third parties to win a significant vote. By contrast, Biden, who won 51% of the vote last time, knows that Trump’s core vote is solid. Rather than try to chip away at Trump’s total, his goal has to be to get past him. Kennedy stands as a threat to that.” — David Lauter, Los Angeles Times
In such a close election, the Kennedy effect could go either way — and that’s the scariest part.
“[Recent polls suggest that] Kennedy’s presence on the ballot in swing states would pull voters from both major-party candidates. The effect of doing so, however, is uncertain, and it’s not clear that Kennedy would shift the winner in any state from Trump to Biden or vice versa. But, also? He might. For the major-party campaigns, the takeaway is simpler: Kennedy’s candidacy constitutes the worst kind of wrench in the system — one with an unclear outcome.” — Philip Bump, Washington Post
None of this would be a problem if America used ranked-choice voting.
“By awarding voters the power to rank the field in order, [ranked-choice voting] fixes the spoiler effect that emerges in any race with more than two candidates. … If someone wins a majority of first-place support during the first round, they win, as in any other election. If not, the last-place finishers are eliminated, one by one, and their supporters' second choices come into play to identify a majority winner. In other words, voters this fall could choose to rank RFK Jr. first (or another third-party candidate), and if that candidate fares poorly, the voter’s ballot would be counted for a backup choice instead.” — David Daley, Salon
