Not since businessman Ross Perot scrambled the presidential elections in 1992 and 1996 has a third-party candidate had the potential to influence a presidential election in the way that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is poised to do this November.
In polling for a national election that accounts for fellow third-party candidates Jill Stein and Cornel West, Kennedy is polling at 12.4%, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average. While distantly behind presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump’s 41.1% and President Joe Biden’s 38.4%, it’s an unusually high number for a third-party candidate, and high enough that if he were to draw that number of voters in a general election, it could scramble the entire electoral map.
The biggest hurdle to Kennedy’s success is ballot access. To date, the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy and son of former Sen. Robert F. Kennedy has only qualified for ballots in New Hampshire, Hawaii, Utah, and Nevada. But his campaign and supporting super PAC are flush with cash and seem to have the resources to put the insurgent candidate on the ballot in the remaining 46 states.
On Tuesday, reports surfaced that Kennedy is close to announcing his vice presidential candidate and that New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers and former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura are on the short list.
And while Rodgers joining the ticket would be a doomsday scenario for Jets fans as their long-suffering team would once again be without a franchise quarterback, the possible selection of Ventura offers a view into the kind of disruption that the Kennedy candidacy may have.
In 1998, Ventura shocked the nation when he won the Minnesota gubernatorial election as a candidate for the Reform Party, defeating Republican Norm Coleman and Democrat Skip Humphrey. Aside from some continued success for independent candidates in Maine, this is one of the very few times that a third-party candidate has won a statewide election in modern times.
It is extremely unlikely that Kennedy will replicate the kind of historic support that Ventura pulled in 1998 that allowed the former professional wrestler to win the election, but he could nevertheless affect the race to 270 electoral votes in other ways.
In 2020, there were eight states won by former President Donald Trump and 12 states won by President Joe Biden that had a margin of victory below Kennedy’s 12.4% support in national polling. While it is unlikely that the states with larger margins of victory will be affected by the presence of a third-party candidate, Kennedy’s candidacy could very well influence states with smaller margins, depending on how many voters he draws from either of the two major party candidates.
While the performances of Trump and Biden in typical swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and North Carolina definitely would be affected by Kennedy’s presence on the ballot, there are other states that have been uncompetitive for several cycles that could be affected.
Take Minnesota or New Hampshire for instance, two states won by Biden with a margin of just over 7%. Minnesota has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1972, and New Hampshire since 2000. It would not be unexpected to suddenly see Trump competitive in both states if Kennedy pulls a significant percentage of the vote.
On the flip side, Trump won Texas, Florida, Iowa, and Ohio by 8% or less in 2020. A Kennedy performance that cuts into his margins there could put Biden within striking distance of all four states.
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Polling suggests that Trump benefits slightly from Kennedy’s presence in the race, but the independent candidate is pulling support from both major party candidates. If he is able to qualify for the presidential debates, should they happen, Kennedy’s visibility immediately would increase and potentially scramble the race even further if it coincides with a polling bump.
There is zero doubt that either Trump or Biden will win the presidential election of 2024. But whichever man takes the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2025, may very well have the insurgent candidacy of Kennedy to thank for it.
