RFK Jr. Is Poised To Tilt The Presidential Race — But It’s Still Not Clear To

Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is expected to influence the outcome of the 2024 rematch between former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, but it’s still not evident from whom he will pull more support.

Since Kennedy switched his party affiliation from Democrat to independent in October, polling has largely suggested he’s more of a threat to Biden’s campaign than Trump’s. However, several recent polls have found the independent’s presence on the ballot hindering Trump’s candidacy, spurring questions about who Kennedy will eventually take votes from in November.

“Kennedy has, I think, more lasting impact on this race than most people thought he would,” Jon McHenry, GOP polling analyst and vice president at North Star Opinion Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “All he really needs to be on is Arizona, Georgia, you know, Nevada, a handful of states, North Carolina, maybe Michigan, Wisconsin. He only needs to be on the ballot in five or six states to have an impact on this, because even if he only takes 3%, that’s enough to swing a bunch of states.”

A NBC News survey released on Sunday showed Trump ahead by two points in a head-to-head matchup with the president, but the race swung by four points to Biden when Kennedy, “Justice for All Party” candidate Cornel West and Green Party contender Jill Stein were included. Kennedy received 13% of the share.

The next day, a Marist poll found Biden leading Trump in a two-way race 51% to 48%. The president’s margin grew to five points with Kennedy, West and Stein on the ballot, and the independent locked up 14% support.

A Quinnipiac survey published on Wednesday indicated that Kennedy’s presence on the ballot didn’t help Trump either, with the two remaining tied in both a two- and five-way race, where the independent notched 16% of the vote. The March version of the poll showed Trump benefiting from a multi-candidate matchup.

Nationally, Trump’s lead against Biden is still slightly larger with Kennedy and other third-party candidates included in the RealClearPolitics (RCP) average, shifting from 0.3 to 0.9 points.

In Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia and Pennsylvania, Trump’s chances increase in five-way races, according to the RCP averages. Conversely, the former president’s margins drop in the battleground states of Wisconsin and Michigan.

Kennedy is currently pulling in anywhere from 6.3% to 10.5% support across all seven swing states, according to the RCP averages.

Pollsters and strategists who spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation argue that Kennedy’s complex candidacy makes it difficult to predict who he’s pulling more support from.

“It’s not surprising that he appears to take votes from one candidate and then another, because that’s what’s going on in the electorate in the people thinking about whether they’re going to vote for Trump or Biden or RFK. There’s going to be a lot of movement around those three answers depending on what the news of the day is,” Republican strategist Mike McKenna told the DCNF.

“In a normal election — in a two-person election — you would see the sways go back and forth between the candidates, right? It would just be those two, you know, and it would tend to be a zero-sum game,” McKenna added. “But now … it’s a little more mathematically complicated.”

Many attribute Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss to Stein’s presence on the ballot in key states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — all of which Trump won by less than a point.

Kyle Kondik, nonpartisan polling analyst and managing editor for Sabato’s Crystal Ball, believes Kennedy’s “complicated” candidacy is one of the reasons why it’s still an “open question” as to whom he’ll siphon off more votes from.

“On one hand he’s got the last name of one of the most famous Democratic Party families in the last century, so naturally, you’d think he would pull from Democrats, and he probably is to some degree,” Kondik told the DCNF. “But also his actual public persona as someone who is basically like anti-establishment and like kind of really critical of public health authorities and critical of the government in certain ways, even though he sometimes comes at it from a left-leaning perspective, that maybe fits more neatly into like what the Republicans’ messaging is right now than the Democrats.”

While McHenry still believes that Kennedy “hurts both candidates pretty equally,” he issued a warning to Republicans about the independent’s candidacy.

“He’s sort of been a darling for Republicans for a while because he’s anti-vaccine, and, ‘yeah, he’s a Democrat who’s running against Biden, that’s great!’ And then he goes out and gets a progressive running mate, and they go, ‘oh, wait, is he actually a liberal?’ Yeah, actually, he is,” McHenry told the DCNF. “This sort of implicit permission to vote…