There is conflicting polling regarding whether Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential candidacy helps or harms each of the majority party contenders. The reality of the third-party/RFK effect may not be fully understood until after the general election ballots are counted and analyzed. Still, Kennedy has plans not to wait that long.
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On Wednesday, at a campaign event in New York, Kennedy announced the “no spoiler pledge,” proposing Democrat President Joe Biden should agree to discontinue his candidacy, should polls show that the 81-year-old incumbent is the real “spoiler” in the race, not the Independent Kennedy.
The proposed pact would require a 50-state poll to be conducted in mid-October, jointly funded by the Kennedy and Biden campaigns. The poll must survey more than 30,000 voters and whoever is disfavored in a match-up against the presumed GOP candidate, former President Donald Trump, must drop out of the race.
Kennedy believes that he is not the “spoiler” and that his odds at besting Trump in a general election are better than Biden’s, based on polling from John Zogby Strategies, a firm that has worked with both the campaign and a Kennedy-aligned super PAC.
Kennedy and his campaign manager Amaryllis Fox Kennedy highlighted a scenario demonstrating that Kennedy would beat Trump without Biden, or any Democratic Party candidate, in the race.
During the presentation, Fox Kennedy said:
Is there any scenario in which President Trump participates in the election and doesn’t win it? Yes, there is exactly one. And that scenario is that President Biden acknowledges that he cannot win.
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RFK Jr. conveyed that he doesn’t consider Trump to be a “spoiler,” saying:
If I remain in the race and the election were held today, President Trump would win and President Biden would lose. President Trump is not a spoiler, because he can actually win, but I’m happy to make this same pledge with President Trump because I can do better against President Biden than President Trump can.
People who are voting for President Trump because they’re afraid of President Biden should be supporting me, and vice versa. Ultimately, I think what we all want in this election is for Americans not to feel they have to vote out of fear.
As I previously reported, a new Emerson College/ Hill poll shows that Trump leads Biden in all seven swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
When third-party candidates like RFK Jr. are included, the poll showed more support is pulled away from Biden than from Trump in Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In Arizona and Michigan, RFK Jr. evenly pulls support from the major party candidates.
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The Democratic National Committee called Kennedy a “spoiler,” in a statement, spokesperson Matt Corridoni referenced an HBO comedy, saying:
His VEEP-like performance today does nothing to dispel that notion — it only reinforces how deeply unserious his campaign is.
Fox Kennedy says it is fair to urge Biden to drop out of the race because the Democrat National Committee (DNC) has previously done so to RFK Jr.
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