Why Malignant Crank RFK Jr. Could Ensure Biden's Reelection
The conventional wisdom about RFK Jr. is wrong and getting wronger.
Democrats have been very concerned about the independent presidential candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and with good reason: Polls have shown him garnering as much as 15 percent or so of the vote, which if it holds would make his the strongest third-party candidacy in over 30 years. Given the power of the Kennedy name among Democrats, the party was worried enough that Kennedy and other third party candidates (including leftists Cornel West and Jill Stein) could throw the election to Donald Trump that they created a special unit to battle against them. And they put together an event last week in which much of the Kennedy family — including some of RFK Jr.’s own siblings — endorsed Biden in a very public rebuke of their relative.
But things have changed. If some new polls are correct, Kennedy is now taking more votes from Trump, as he should. There are good reasons to think that trend will continue. In fact, it’s possible that Kennedy could tip the election — but to President Biden.
Before going further we should note that Robert F. Kennedy is a narcissist and a loon, and his conspiracy-mongering about vaccines has been utterly toxic to the country. You wouldn’t want him on your local city council, let alone running the executive branch. But the most important thing to know about him at this point may be that most voters don’t know much about him.
Before we get to why RFK could help Biden win, let’s set the context. As we all know by now, many voters dislike both Trump and Biden, which may be particular to these two men but is also a constant of politics in our two-party duopoly. I can’t recall an election where at least some voters didn’t tell reporters and pollsters that they wished they had more choices. What they really mean is that they wish there were more famous candidates, because there are always plenty of choices: You can vote for the Libertarian candidate, or the Green candidate, or the Socialist Workers candidate, or the Natural Law candidate, or the Bread and Roses candidate, or any of the dozens of candidates who run for president in every election.
In some years, one or two (but usually one) candidate gets a substantial amount of press coverage, which leads significant numbers of voters to decide that there’s something worthwhile about voting for them. Here’s a graph of the total third-party candidate vote percentages for the last half-century:
A couple things stand out. The two highest figures are represented mostly by Ross Perot, but contrary to what many assumed at the time, Perot didn’t torpedo George H.W. Bush’s reelection bid in 1992. Instead, subsequent studies showed either that he took about equally from both Bush and Bill Clinton, or that he reduced what would have been an even more emphatic Clinton victory. There’s a high figure for 1980 when John Anderson mounted a strong bid and even got to debate Republican nominee Ronald Reagan on television. Then comes 2016, in which Libertarian Gary Johnson got nearly 4.5 million votes and Jill Stein got almost 1.5 million. Even at the low point in 1984, there were still 620,000 voters who chose someone other than the major-party candidates.
That brings us to an important point about this year’s election: It could be the first one in modern history in which we’ll be able to say that an incumbent got a decisive boost from a third-party candidate.
Of course, that’s just a possibility. RFK’s vote could dwindle to nothing, or Trump or Biden could win easily. And where third party candidates get their votes matters as much as how many votes they get overall; Ralph Nader got 97,000 votes in Florida in 2000, and George W. Bush was named the winner of that election by a margin of just 537 votes.
The shift is already underway
The assumption about RFK Jr. until now has been that he could gain support from significant numbers of Democrats who aren’t happy with Biden and would vote for him simply because his name is “Kennedy.” But let’s look at a couple of new polls.
The latest poll from NBC News tested vote choices by first asking respondents whether they were going to vote for Biden or Trump; Trump led by two points. Then they asked again, but this time giving respondents a choice of Biden, Trump, RFK Jr., Stein, and West. That shifted Biden into a two-point lead, with RFK getting 15 percent. And there’s more:
The big reason is that the poll finds a greater share of Trump voters in the head-to-head matchup backing Kennedy in the expanded ballot. Fifteen percent of respondents who picked Trump the first time pick Kennedy in the five-way ballot, compared with 7% of those who initially picked Biden.
In addition, Republican voters view Kennedy much more favorably (40% positive, 15% negative) than Democratic voters do (16% positive, 53% negative).
That’s just one poll; it might be an outlier. But here’s another one: In a new NPR/Marist poll, when respondents were asked just about Biden and Trump, Biden led 51-48 among all registered voters and 53-47 among those who said they’ll definitely vote in November. But when the five choices were offered, among registered voters Biden led 43-38, with 14 percent choosing Kennedy. Among those definitely voting, Biden led 46-39, with 11 percent choosing Kennedy. So adding Kennedy boosted Biden, though only by a little.
Where things are likely to go from here
There are a couple of key things to keep in mind as we think about where Kennedy could go from here. The first is that his support is almost certain to drop as we get closer to the election, not only because many partisans who flirt with an independent candidate eventually come home to their party, but also because a lot of people who are now saying they might vote for Kennedy just don’t know very much about him, and could find out something they don’t like.
Second, how his support changes — and which current Kennedy supporters stick with him and which don’t — is something the campaigns could influence. And which side is going to be talking about him? The Democrats are.
That’s because there’s almost nothing anyone could learn about RFK Jr. at this point that would pull Biden voters toward him. The most important thing about Kennedy is that he’s an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, and almost any Democrat who has been thinking only “He’s a Democrat, but not Biden” is likely to be alienated from Kennedy once they find that out.
Kennedy’s ideology is a random amalgam of liberal and conservative ideas that as a whole has almost no natural constituency. On abortion, for instance — which will be the single most important issue in this campaign — he’s barely willing to say where he stands. And as more people learn about his anti-vaccine activism, any new defections he gets will probably be anti-vax Trump supporters, maybe those who feel Trump isn’t anti-vax enough.
All of which means that Kennedy has nowhere to go but down, but whatever votes he retains are more likely to have otherwise been Trump supporters. Put enough of them in the right state — say Wisconsin, which was decided by around 20,000 votes in both 2016 and 2020 — and he could push some electoral votes Biden’s way. And that could make all the difference.
Or maybe not, walked by the TV screen showing Fox playing the "a worm ate my brain" story.