New polling indicates that independent presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appears to be taking votes from Donald Trump in key battleground states.
If the polling data bears out in reality, Kennedy’s inclusion in the race would narrowly aid President Joe Biden in clinching re-election in November.
The polling, from Mainstreet Research, PolCom Lab and Florida Atlantic University, sampled 2,068 voters in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan between May 30 and 31.
In Pennsylvania, a head-to-head matchup between Trump and Biden favors the former president 45 percent to 43 percent. But when Kennedy is an option, he nabs eight percent, which throws the victory to Biden, 41 to 39 percent, in his home state.
Among voters in Wisconsin, Trump has a narrow one-point lead over Biden. With Kennedy on the ballot, Biden takes a seven-point lead, beating Trump’s 31 percent with 38 percent of voters’ support.
In a two-person race in Michigan, Biden and Trump are deadlocked at 45 percent each. With Kennedy in the running in the Wolverine State, the independent candidate nabs 11 percent, swinging the majority of votes to Biden by two points.
A June 4 press release regarding the poll’s results noted the Presidential race in the battleground states is “too close to predict a winner with the difference well within the margin of error (± 3%).”
“Democrats and Republicans are both fearful that Kennedy will harm their chances of success in November,” The Hill reports. “Conventional wisdom from both sides had been that the environmental lawyer blunts Biden more than Trump, though that theory has softened in recent weeks.”
The outlet further reported: “Pollsters and operatives monitoring the third-party dynamic believe the race is highly fluid, with Kennedy being an unpredictable element in the fall. They note his voter base is harder to identify for a variety of reasons, including his strength with younger and independent voters who tend to be more volatile.”
A central challenge for Kennedy’s campaign is managing to secure a slot on the ballot in every state.
According to the independent candidate’s website, Kennedy has gathered enough signatures and submitted all the necessary paperwork to appear on Michigan’s ballot. Kennedy and vice-presidential candidate Nicole Shanahan were nominated by the state’s Natural Law Party.
Access to the Pennsylvania ballot is in progress, as the campaign works to gather the required 5,000 signatures by the Aug. 1 deadline.
Wisconsin, which requires 2,000 signatures for ballot access, does not open its window until July 1. Then, Kennedy has until Aug. 6 to submit the signatures.
In a May 31 press release announcing ballot access in South Carolina after accepting a nomination from the Alliance Party, the campaign said Kennedy is officially on the ballot in Utah, Michigan, California, Delaware, Oklahoma, Hawaii, and Texas.
The campaign reports collecting enough signatures to appear on ballots in New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Idaho, Nebraska, Iowa, Ohio, New Jersey and New York.
Last month, Kennedy acquired over 130,000 signatures in New York – three times the required amount, the campaign noted. A few weeks prior, he submitted twice the number of signatures needed to get on the ballot in Texas.
“The pundits … were saying it would be impossible for us to get on the ballot, and we got on the ballot in Texas,” said Kennedy, who has disputed a number of polls that place him in low double or high single digits. “And if we can get on in Texas, we can get on everywhere.”
According to a CNN election results 2020 map, Biden beat Trump by a little over 20,000 votes in Wisconsin, over 150,000 votes in Michigan and more than 80,000 votes in Pennsylvania.
