Trendency: Will RFK Jr. Matter in this Election?
a Trendency feature
How many third-party Presidential candidates can you name without using Google? Candidates outside the traditional two-party system have struggled throughout America's short history, with no third-party candidate ever making it close to winning a Presidential election (not to ignore Teddy Roosevelt, but his third-party run against Taft occurred after his Presidency and did end up failing). Oftentimes we discus these candidates as a liability - which of the two major candidates will suffer because of the small, but increasingly important, share of votes they pull away? While that framing is viewed as incorrect by independent candidates, in our two-party system the question is a legitimate one.
One of this year's third-party candidates, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (RFK Jr.) was originally on the Democratic primary ballot but is now running as an independent, and announced his running mate this week. Is it right to say that President Biden has a reason to sweat Kennedy's pivot to a third-party candidacy? Or should former President Trump be worried? The data show something different.
With RFK Jr.'s announcement of his VP we thought it would be interesting to look at his effect on the polling. As a reminder, our methodology is different than most polling in two main ways …
We are talking with the same people over time, so movement or comparisons are not based on this group of voters under the age of 40 versus this group a month later. Instead we are tracking how individual panelists are changing their opinions.
We do not typically ask questions in a binary format (“are you voting for Biden or Trump?”). Instead our questions are based on allocations (“what are the chances you will vote for Biden and what are the chances you will vote for Trump?”) this allows for us to get a better understanding of movement and how the relationships between answers are changing.
With all that being said, when we ask registered voters the chances of voting for each candidate and include RFK Jr. in the question, the average score given to Biden is 42 percent, with Trump at 37 percent, RFK Jr. at 12 percent and "Other" at 7 percent. About 2 percent were an under-vote which should be thought of as undecided. When we ask the same question without RFK Jr.’s name, Trump is up 44 to 41 on average and 13% the average for "Other".
Not surprisingly the lion share of both Biden and Trump supporters are solid for their candidate of choice regardless of whether RFK Jr. is named, but there is a measurable difference between the potential support levels for RFK Jr. The average allocation for RFK Jr. among Biden supporters in the two-way question is 4 percent and among Trump supporters it is 8 percent. Both obviously low but clearly a larger openness of consideration of supporting RFK among Trump voters.
For context, the "Other" vote in the two-way race is not exclusively RFK, Jr. support. Among those who indicate a high level of likelihood of voting for "other" in the two way race the average level of support for RFK Jr. is 47 percent when his name is added. Another 38 percent is the average level of support for "Other" and Biden's support is 14 percent on average among this cohort. Giving a candidate a 14 percent chance is certainly not high, but it is much higher than Trump's 1 percent average.
The big takeaways …
Polling results are going to differ if RFK Jr. is named or if he is not singled out.
At this time RFK Jr. is having an effect on both candidates, but he is having a bigger effect on Trump.
“Other” in a two way race poll should not be equated as RFK Jr. exclusively
The volatility of "Other" and RFK Jr. is very high (these voters tend to move their choice regularly), while Biden and Trump supporters are mostly solid and consistent.