After independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. suspended his presidential campaign, he moved forward with a simple plan. Withdraw from the ten battleground states in which he might act as a spoiler and cost former President Donald Trump (who he is now actively supporting) the election but remain in states that aren’t really up for grabs either way. It’s a have your cake and eat it too, kind of situation. If RFK Jr. can send most of his voters to Trump – and maybe even drum up a few more in the process – he might be able to prevent Vice President Kamala Harris from winning that shorter but more powerful title.
But the plan isn’t working.
Only seven of the ten swing states have agreed to remove RFK Jr. from the ballots; three have refused. Will Kennedy end up spoiling the election in those states? If so, who gets those votes – and will they be enough to decide the election?
RFK Jr., the Captive Candidate
As Kennedy explained when he suspended his campaign on August 23, the former Democrat doesn’t want to act as a spoiler in battleground states where independent voters will make the difference now that he doesn’t feel he can win. To that end, he asked to be taken off the ballots in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin. In some of those states – like Georgia and Nevada, for example – Kennedy’s ballot access was far from guaranteed and faced legal challenges by the Democratic Party. In others – like Florida and Ohio – he had already won access, but the states agreed to remove his name.
Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, however, are a different story.
A spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office in Michigan told reporters that RFK Jr. would remain on the ballot because “he cannot withdraw at this point.” He is running under the Natural Law Party, which already had ballot access in the state, allowing the former Democrat to skip the whole signature-collecting process. But since he was selected by the party at its convention, it’s now too late to replace him – meaning he’s stuck on the ballot.
The North Carolina State Board of Elections announced Thursday, August 29, that RFK Jr. will remain on the ballot simply because millions have already been printed. The first batch of absentee ballots will be mailed out next week on September 6. So, it’s not a matter of the rules forbidding it so much as it’s simply too late. “It would not be practical to reprint ballots that have already been printed and meet the state law deadline to start absentee voting,” the board said in a statement.
According to Wisconsin law, the only way anyone who files nomination papers and qualifies can get off the ballot or even decline the nomination to avoid being listed is to die. To say that particular route would hinder Kennedy’s plans is an understatement.
Spoiler Alert
So, what are the chances RFK Jr. might spoil the election in those three states – and what difference might it make if he does? Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin have 15, 16, and 10 electoral votes, respectively. Any one of those – and certainly any combination – could easily sway the election.
Recent polling suggests that Kennedy was pulling more voters from Trump than from Harris, so it makes the most sense to suppose his presence on these ballots would work slightly to the advantage of the sitting VP rather than the former president – if Kennedy were still trying to pull votes there, that is. According to the RCP Average, Trump has a slight lead over Harris in North Carolina, 47.6% to 47.3%, but she is ahead of him in Michigan (48.9% to 46.6%) and Wisconsin (49.0% to 47.1%). Losing votes to Kennedy seems likely to cost Trump his slight edge and put him further behind Harris in places where she’s already ahead. And, despite their fervent attempts to keep him off ballots to begin with, this is likely why Democrats tried to sue to keep Kennedy on the ballots in some of the swing states he withdrew from.
However, RFK Jr. is no longer actively campaigning for himself. He is stumping for Trump, though, and voting for him in these three states – at this point, against his will – would seem to come from spite more than any hope that he’d actually win. Surely a former supporter who wants to get back at Kennedy for suspending his campaign and working with Trump would simply vote for Harris? Folks often say that someone who might vote conservative opting for a third-party candidate is like a vote for the Democrat (or vice versa). That’s false, of course – but if it were true, then a vote for the opposition must be worth double. It’s simply the more efficient way to spite a major-party candidate.
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