Former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gestures during Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump’s rally in Glendale, Arizona, Aug. 23, 2024.
Go Nakamura | Reuters
When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dropped his independent White House bid and endorsed former President Donald Trump in August, he laid out an electoral strategy he said would boost the Republican nominee’s chances in must-win battleground states.
Kennedy, who spent most of his campaign fighting for ballot access, announced Aug. 23 that he would reverse course and remove his name from swing-state ballots where Trump stood to benefit from a head-to-head matchup with Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Our polling consistently showed that by staying on the ballot in the battleground states, I would likely hand the election over to the Democrats,” Kennedy said.
But Kennedy’s get-off-the-ballot strategy has not gone according to plan.
Despite his efforts to withdraw his name so that it doesn’t appear on printed ballots as an option, Kennedy is stuck on the ballot in North Carolina, Wisconsin and Michigan.
This significantly reduces the potential electoral boost Trump could get in these states from Kennedy’s exit.
Minor-party candidates cannot withdraw in Michigan. On Tuesday, a Michigan Court of Claims judge rejected Kennedy’s challenge to the state’s decision.
Wisconsin’s Elections Commission has voted to keep Kennedy on the state’s ballot. North Carolina’s State Board of Elections has too, a decision Kennedy has sued to overturn.
Kennedy’s stumbles in Wisconsin, North Carolina and Michigan are especially significant because they are three of only five swing states where polling shows that Trump would do better in a head-to-head contest against Harris, without Kennedy. The other two are Arizona and Pennsylvania.
In the two remaining battleground states — Nevada and Georgia — polling shows Kennedy’s withdrawal from the race may actually backfire on Trump, whose overall lead shrinks when the field goes from six candidates to just two.
So with Kennedy still on the ballot in Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin, Trump likely won’t see the boost in support in those states that the newly formed Trump-Kennedy alliance had been hoping for.
This leaves just Arizona and Pennsylvania as the states where Kennedy’s exit appears poised to help Trump outright.
Kennedy also withdrew from the race in Florida, Texas and Ohio, though the three states are all considered to be safely Trump’s this election cycle.
Kennedy’s endorsement could still play to Trump’s advantage in other ways, even if his attempt to expand the Republican’s electoral map has been lackluster.
Throughout his controversy-riddled campaign, Kennedy built momentum by appealing to undecided voters disenchanted with the mainstream two-party candidates. Trump is now hoping that Kennedy’s seal of approval will strengthen his pitch to those voters.
“He has a lot of votes that he could have gotten,” Trump said of Kennedy at the Arizona rally in August.
“I think he’s going to have a huge influence on this campaign.”
With 63 days until Election Day, RCP’s polling average as of Tuesday afternoon had Harris leading Trump, 48.1% to 46.2%, in a national head-to-head matchup.