Some national presidential surveys show Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s approval rating is as high as 16%. He's not good enough to win the presidency, but he's certainly good enough to ruin another candidate's bid for the White House.
What isn't immediately clear is which candidates.
Nationally, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are tied, with both having an approval rating of 46%, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released Wednesday. With Kennedy included, both candidates lost an equal percentage of votes, with Biden and Trump receiving 37% support and Kennedy 16%. The Decision Desk Headquarters poll, which averaged 130 presidential polls, shows the same dead heat between Trump and Biden when Kennedy is in the race.
There is a well-documented lack of enthusiasm for a potential rematch between Biden and Trump, with some voters exploring a third option. A handful of third-party and independent candidates are in the race, but Kennedy is the most likely candidate.
It remains to be seen which party's standard-bearer will be more affected if Kennedy is on the ballot in November. A lifelong Democrat turned independent, his background as an environmental activist and traditional last name could draw Democrats away from Biden. But it's entirely possible that a prominent vaccine skeptic who has publicly advanced many conspiracy theories will appeal to the same anti-establishment members who have pinned their hopes on President Trump.
A favorability survey compiled by political website FiveThirtyEight found that 37.7% of Americans had a favorable impression of Kennedy, compared to 42.1% for Trump and 39.9% for Biden. Of course, if Mr. Kennedy is not on the ballot, the level of support does not matter. Also, voting is not easy in some states.
Voting criteria vary by state, but Kennedy estimates it would cost $15 million to collect one million signatures to get his name on the ballot in all 50 states. It's what he calls a “huge challenge” and one that comes at a cost that the other two candidates don't have.
In battleground states, the states where he can have the most influence, Kennedy faces challenges with short signature-gathering windows, early deadlines, and high signature quotas. For example, independent candidates in Michigan require a minimum of 12,000 signatures. At least 100 of these signatures must come from at least half of the state's congressional districts. Also, the signature must be within 180 days of being created.
In Arizona, independent candidates must receive signatures from at least 3% of registered voters. Candidates cannot begin submitting signatures until July 28th, and all signatures must be submitted within three weeks by August 17th.
David Richards, dean of international relations and political science at the University of Lynchburg, says this challenge is no coincidence.
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“This is a complicated process, and it's intentionally complicated, because the two parties, Democrats and Republicans, control every statehouse, and of course they have for most of U.S. history. “Because I've done it,” he says. “So they can set the rules and they don’t want competition from third parties.”
Too much competition can hurt candidates, especially in battleground states. Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who is running again in 2024, received just 1% of the popular vote in 2016, but some Democrats believe her presence in the race could lead to a narrow loss for the Democratic candidate. He claims to have won Hillary Clinton's support in the states. There are states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania that have big margins for Trump.
Trump currently leads in the battleground states of Michigan, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia. Trump and Biden are tied in the battleground states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Richards said Kennedy appears to be driving votes for both candidates. In any case, he said, either candidate could lose the battleground state by a narrow margin to Mr. Kennedy.
“In battleground states, fewer than 10,000 votes could be the difference between the two major parties,” he says. “Kennedy may not win the electorate, but all he has to do is deny either Trump or Biden in one or two battleground states and the election will go to the other candidate.”
Richards said supporters of former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who is still drawing a sizable share of protest votes in the Republican primary more than a month after withdrawing from the race, are more traditional. He said he was unlikely to end up supporting Kennedy because of his appeal to Republicans. Some may see President Kennedy's platform as “a lot of work to be done.''
Another group unlikely to support Kennedy is other Kennedys. More than a dozen members of the Kennedy family endorsed Biden during a campaign stop in Philadelphia last week. “Almost all of Joe and Rose Kennedy's grandchildren support Joe Biden,” said Kerry Kennedy, the candidate's sister.
Kennedy's campaign announced earlier this month that it had won the right to vote in Michigan, a state Trump won in 2016 but Biden won in 2020. Officially, Kennedy was only included on the ballot in the traditionally conservative state of Utah. But his campaign argued that states such as Idaho, Iowa, Hawaii, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire and North Carolina also meet the criteria to be listed on the ballot.
President Kennedy offered a glimpse of his signature-gathering strategy during a political convention in Iowa earlier this month. Instead of spending months gathering signatures, the campaign said it was able to collect signatures all at once in less than two hours. The signatures have not yet been verified by election authorities.
