The 2024 presidential election will almost certainly be close, especially in the handful of battleground states that could decide electoral votes. That has put a lot of attention on the issue of “spoilers,” or “spoilers” that could siphon enough votes from President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump and prevent either of them from winning key states. There is. Now that No Labels has decided not to run for president, three third-party campaigns are underway. One by Cornel West, an African-American former Harvard professor who is running as an independent, and the other by Jill Stein, who is running as an independent. And finally, the one that has gotten the most attention and has the most support, according to polls, is the independent group led by John's nephew, environmental activist and anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It's a political party. Kennedy.
For any of these candidates to actually win, they must first qualify to vote in enough states to account for at least 270 electoral votes. That's highly unlikely given how difficult it is to fill out a ballot in the first place. But these candidates only need to appear on the ballot in a handful of battleground states to become spoilers. Recall that Biden won Arizona and Georgia in 2020 with 0.3% of the vote. When a race is this close, third-party candidates can become spoilers.
Of the three most talked about “spoilers,” Jill Stein is the most likely to be on the majority state ballot. She has a significant lead in delegates to the Green Party's virtual convention in July and is likely to be the candidate. The Green Party has been in existence since 1984, so it has a state party organization and field candidates.1 Despite not having many successful candidates, it has enough infrastructure to claim to be on the ballot in 20 states as of this writing and is actively campaigning in others. I am. In the 2000 presidential election between former Vice President Al Gore and Governor George W. Bush, consumer advocate Ralph Nader was the Green Party candidate on the Florida ballot. Bush's lead was less than 1% of the vote. Assuming that many of Nadar's voters voted for Al Gore, his 1.6% vote share would have been more than enough to put the state in Gore's column.
Another “spoiler” candidate, Cornel West, is underfunded and has no institutional infrastructure behind him. So far, he has secured voting access in only three states: Oregon, South Carolina and Utah. Many fear that Biden could pull votes from large cities with large black populations in key battleground states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania, but he's not strong enough to be a spoiler in any battleground state, at least not yet. does not seem to be gaining support.
Unlike Stein and West, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. seems closer to being a spoiler. Conventional wisdom holds that he will steal votes from Biden because of his famous name and environmental activism. But some argue that he is also a threat to Trump because of his anti-vaccine campaign and fascination with conspiracy theories. So how does President Kennedy go about accessing the ballot? In some states, it's easier to qualify to vote as a political party (with a signature) than to qualify as a candidate only. (becomes less).2 Therefore, Kennedy's strategy was to create a political party in which he would be the candidate, We the People, and use it to vote in five states: California, Delaware, Hawaii, Mississippi, and North Carolina. He is doing better in polls than other third-party candidates, but is unlikely to be a spoiler in three heavily Democratic states: California, Delaware and Hawaii. He also seems unlikely to become a spoiler in heavily Republican Mississippi. However, North Carolina is a state that Democrats have won in the past, so it is likely to be a very close race. There, Kennedy could potentially block Biden's victory. The latest Quinnipiac poll shows Trump leading by two points in North Carolina's two-way race and three points in the five-way race, with RFK Jr. receiving double-digit support.
Table 1 shows the difference between filing as an independent party and filing as part of an organized party establishment in some states.
As Table 2 shows, the exact composition of the presidential ballot will not be known until this summer. However, Table #2 shows where Kennedy has had success thus far. They claim to have achieved ballot access in Hawaii, Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Iowa, and Utah, but Utah is the only state with confirmed access. Elsewhere, there is legal or legislative activity surrounding Kennedy's ballot access issue. Note that in the eight states where the Kennedy campaign claims to have achieved voting access, the total electoral votes are only 51. And in addition to North Carolina, New Hampshire is the only swing state in this group. Nevertheless, if Kennedy sacrifices New Hampshire's four electoral votes and North Carolina's 16 electoral votes to Biden, those two states could decide the election. Michigan's filing deadline passes in July. Filing deadlines for Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania pass in August. Each time Mr. Kennedy appears on the ballot in a battleground state, he moves closer and closer to becoming a spoiler for 2024, but so far his organization has shown an ability to raise money and meet filing deadlines. No wonder the DNC has launched a campaign to educate voters about Kennedy as Trump's “stalking horse.” And the Biden campaign has chosen to announce publicly that the rest of the Kennedy family remains loyal to him and the Democratic Party.
