Here’s Why Democrats Want RFK Jr to Remain on Battleground State Ballots
Polling analysis shows that head-to-head with Harris, Trump does about 2 points better than when RFK Jr. is on the ballot.
As we all know, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his campaign last Friday and immediately threw his support behind former President Donald Trump. During his announcement at a Phoenix, Arizona, rally, Kennedy said, “In about 10 battleground states, where my presence would be a spoiler, I’m going to remove my name. And I’ve already started that process and urge voters not to vote for me.”
It was reported earlier this week that, despite Kennedy’s efforts, his name will remain on the ballot in Michigan and Wisconsin. And on Thursday, the North Carolina State Board of Elections voted to keep his name on the ballot as well.
Unfortunately, Kennedy’s presence on the ballots in these key swing states is likely to help Vice President Kamala Harris. In the X post below, polling firm Echelon Insights illustrates how that could happen.
Echelon asked survey participants which candidate they would vote for if the election were held today. The possible answers to the first question included Trump, Harris, and all third-party candidates including Kennedy: 47% chose Harris; 45%, Trump; 4%, Kennedy; and the remaining 4% chose other third-party candidates.
The possible answers to the second question included Trump, Harris, and all third-party candidates except for Kennedy: Harris and Trump were tied at 48% and 4% chose third-party candidates. Of the 4% of respondents who selected Kennedy in the first question, one quarter broke for Harris while three quarters broke for Trump.
Kennedy’s presence on the ballot (or the lack thereof) clearly changed the outcome. The race shifted from a 2-point win for Harris to a tied race.
RFK has dropped out.
How does this impact the state of the race?
Echelon asked two full ballot questions: One that included all third-party candidates including RFK, and one that excluded RFK.
His dropping out shifts the race from Harris +2 to a tie. pic.twitter.com/TAxrcyvgfO
— Echelon Insights (@EchelonInsights) August 29, 2024
The Washington Post cited a New York Times/Siena College poll released in late July that showed “Kennedy supporters favored Trump over Harris, 50-21, in a head-to-head matchup. (The rest supported neither.)”
In the tweet below, NPR reporter Stephen Fowler posted a memo from Tony Fabrizio, the internal pollster for the Trump campaign, that shows how he expects Kennedy’s share of the vote will be divided between Trump, Harris, and undecided voters in the battleground states.
Each state shows a net advantage for Trump. These range from a paltry 2% in Michigan to a whopping 50% in Nevada. Results for the other states are as follows: Arizona, +25%; Georgia, +13%; North Carolina, +36%; Pennsylvania, +13%; and Wisconsin, +30%.
Fabrizio explains, “To put these numbers into perspective, the net vote gained in a state like Arizona based on just a 2020 turnout model, would be over 41,000 votes [or] nearly 4 times Biden’s winning margin, or in Georgia, the net gain would be 19,000 votes, nearly twice Biden’s margin.”
Fowler gloats over the fact that Kennedy will remain on the ballot in “the states where RFK pulls the most from Trump.”
I suppose I’d gloat too if the situation were reversed.
👁️ When RFK Jr. said he’d drop out of swing states+ support Trump, Trump’s pollster said it was good news because they’d gain more support than Harris.
Now, the states where RFK pulls the most from Trump are… the ones where he’s still on the ballot!https://t.co/edDgzESOlJ pic.twitter.com/eR2hHwRgK5
— stephen fowler (@stphnfwlr) August 27, 2024
Naturally, the Washington Post’s political reporter Aaron Blake was pretty pleased about this latest twist in what has become the most surreal presidential election cycle in modern memory. He cited two occasions when independent candidates dropped out of races and still won over 1% of the vote.
In the 2014 Connecticut governor’s race, independent Joe Visconti withdrew two days before Election Day and endorsed the Republican. He was polling between 3 and 8 percent — similar to Kennedy — and ultimately took a little more than 1 percent.
In the 2020 U.S. Senate race in South Carolina, Constitution Party nominee Bill Bledsoe dropped out and endorsed Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. But Bledsoe wound up getting 1.3 percent of the vote — after Democrats ran ads elevating his name in hopes of diluting Graham’s support.
Blake finally concedes that “a presidential race will earn gobs more attention, which will reduce the possibility that people will go to the polls thinking Kennedy is still actually a candidate.”
Yeah, I think the Trump campaign will probably have that covered.
Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
It’s time for Elon Musk to fund some commercials so RFK Jr can get his message out.
How many RFK Jr ballots will become Harris ballots?
All of them!
President Trump said it best when he said (paraphrasing) unless Jesus Christ is counting the ballots, I will lose.
The question of what a voter would do when there are three candidates vs. when there are two candidates is far different from the question of what the voter would do given two candidates plus a withdrawn candidate whose name still appears on the ballot. I think even an elementary school kid could understand that principle. So, the Democrats are just once again pretending to be clever when they are really just dumbasses.
Just remember, there is a strong moral line between maliciously urging voters to vote for a candidate who is not running, and jocularly urging voters to vote on the wrong day, One of those can get you thrown in prison.
Can this be litigated?
As far as Lindsey Graham, the open primaries benefits him as his cycle of 4 liberal years followed by two years of red-state hawk are courtesy of Democrats voting in Republican primaries.
to even think we can be this close to a communist a subtle ( at this point) communist takeover is unbelievable
blmplo has really made the grade
copping the exact formula used by the 1930s nais in germany where they burnt the place down until they got a seat at the table
same as the founding fathers
so why pretend its not happening again!!????
What the Harris supporters have just done is treated RFK Jr. voters like idiots. This will backfire. RFK Jr. supports are angry at the Democrat party, and hate it now more than Trump. They will vote for Trump out of spite, whereas they may have stayed home otherwise.
Not to mention this overt act/decision to keep Kennedy on the ballot despite his withdrawal may impede removing Biden from the ballot in a handful of States. That could be a problem. Yes we know the electors are being selected but where the State has faithless elector prohibitions they become subject to potential prosecution. Then there’s the issue of certification of the election in a State with Biden but not Harris on the ballot. Then there’s potential for the electoral slate to not be accepted by Congress. Plus lots of pre/post lawfare.
IMO those who believe its a simple substitution of Harris for Biden without further compliance with Federal and State elections laws are setting themselves up for disappointment. All these issues can be overcome but they gotta be addressed and not ignored to get it done.
I have seen some hard left flipping lately, and the D party knows it as well.
If a blue state can force Mr. Kennedy to remain on the ballot despite his desire to exit, can a red state force Mr. Biden to remain on the ballot?
The entire mechanism of “major parties can come and go as they please, but other candidates are glued to the ballot forever” seems more than ripe for challenge. The country (actually, the world) has been sensitized to political double standards and is quickly tiring of them.
so if he wanted a trump victory
why didnt he stay on the ballots /in the race and take votes
FROM HARRIS!!?!?
This isn’t rocket science. He is more like Trump than Harris.
Analysts have concluded that the typical RFK voter denied the choice to vote for RFK is more likely to vote instead for Trump than for Harris.
would have offered the dearborn mi types a way to stick it to the dnc by voting rfk
no trump voter woulkd vote instead of rfk
but a harris voter ,,maybe a person from dearborn mi etc might send rfk their vote to let the dnc know they arent the black community who overwhelming gives them their votes despite the hate
corrections:
for rfk
would
The polling shows that’s not what WOULD happen even if you wish it MIGHT be so.
still falling for those stats etc?
pollsters and the people who give their opinion say what they want to
many wont say they would for trump as we know for being canceled etc
There’s another, simpler reason why they’re fighting to keep Kennedy on the ballot: because he’s on the ones they’ve already printed up and filled out. They’re desperately fighting his withdrawals because if he does, the ballot changes again and they have to scrap all those prints, again. And now they’d have to try and backfill their buffer stash with even tighter deadlines.
I sure hope no one interferes with any mail in ballots in dnc land getting to the polling places
and then watch the dnc lie if need be or create some hysteria that the votes didnt make it and they need to re-vote
THIS IS A REPEAT OF THE 2008 DEM PRIMARY WITH BAMMER AND CLINTON
the claims of voter interference etc
it was a scandal that of course the msm tried to downplay
Leave a Comment