At the start of the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump ally and convicted criminal Steve Bannon promoted the candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom he believed could throw a wrench into President Joe Biden's chances of holding the White House.
Now that Biden has dropped out of the race, however, it looks as though RFK Jr. might draw away more voters from former President Donald Trump than Vice President Kamala Harris.
As The Atlantic's John Hendrickson writes, recent polls have shown RFK Jr. is actually taking away more voters from Trump than from Harris, whereas earlier in the year polls showed him doing more damage to Biden's candidacy.
"In a Marquette survey released on Wednesday, for example, Harris’s national lead grows by two points when Kennedy and other third-party candidates are included," Hendrickson notes. "In the New York Times polling average, Harris leads Trump by one point nationally whether or not Kennedy is included. But in the crucial swing states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania -- with the important caveat that state-level polling data are still sparse -- Kennedy already appears to be giving her an edge."
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Hendrickson goes on to analyze Kennedy's appeal to some Democratic-leaning voters -- and then explains how Harris' entrance into the race has scrambled that equation.
"Kennedy has always performed strongest with independent, undecided, and, most significantly, younger voters -- anyone who is unhappy with the two major-party options," he said. "Shockingly fit at 70 years old, Kennedy marketed himself as the cooler, younger alternative to Biden (81) and Trump (78). With the 59-year-old Harris in the race, Democratic-leaning voters who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for the visibly diminished Biden now have another option."
With more Democratic leaners coming home to Harris, writes Hendrickson, Kennedy's appeal is now more limited to voters with "fringe opinions, conspiracy theorizing, and general anti-establishment politics" -- in other words, many of the same people who might otherwise vote for Trump.
