How Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Could Doom Joe Biden
The independent candidate looms as a serious drag on Biden’s Latino support in Arizona and Nevada.
4/4/24
Saturday marked third-party candidateRobert F. Kennedy Jr.’s relaunch of “Viva Kennedy,” his Hispanic outreachprogram.
To date, Kennedy is officially on the November ballot in just one state: Utah. But his campaign and an allied super PAC, American Values 2024, announced in the last month they have collected more than enough signatures to make the ballot in the critical Southwestern battlegrounds of Arizona and Nevada, where roughly one in five voters are Latino.
Those signatures are still subject to challenge, but if Kennedy does appear on the ballot, it could create dire complications for the Biden campaign. Latino Democrats are now taking the threat of Kennedy’s campaign deadly seriously after national and state leaders were briefed on a previously unreported poll in mid-February by Democratic group Equis Research, which showed Kennedy performing surprisingly well among Latino voters in a dozen battleground states,effectively splintering Biden’s Hispanic coalition from 2020, when he garnered 59 percent Hispanic support.
Kennedy’s popularity appears to be a function of name recognition and a general lack of enthusiasm for President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, not to mention voters brushing their views onto the somewhat empty canvas of his candidacy. The poll of 2,010 registered Latino voters found Kennedy winning one in five young Latino voters, and also reported him capturing a sizable 17 percent Latino support in Arizona and an even more robust 21 percent in Nevada— the highest number among the battleground states polled. The drag on Biden’s Latino support was so great in the survey that Trump was winning among Hispanics overall in 12 battleground states, 41 percent to Biden’s 34 percent.
If those numbers held in November, it would represent aseismic breakin the Democratic coalition and a remaking of the electoral map, leading Democrats to likely lose Nevada and Arizona. In the wake of Trump’s 2020 gains with Hispanics from South Florida to the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas, and even in parts of New Jersey and California, Democrats could still rest easy because the entire Southwest held.But if Nevada and Arizona fall to Trumpas a result of erosion in the Latino vote, it would mean Biden is likely suffering similar losses across the country, presaging an election loss.
“Kennedy is a golden name in Democratic politics and any support he derives comes almost totally at the expense of Biden,” Fernand Amandi, Obama’s Hispanic pollster said.
It’s hard to overstatejust how small Biden’s margin for error is in either Arizona or Nevada. In 2020, when Biden became the first Democrat to turn Arizona blue since Bill Clinton in 1996, he won the state by less than 11,000 votes.
Nationally, those close to the Biden campaign wave away Kennedy’s possible impact and say they don’t believe the 70-year-old former environmental lawyer and son of former New York Democratic Sen. RobertKennedy will get more than 1 percent of the vote. Yet even if he doesn’t, that’s still enough to alter the outcome — using the 2020 vote totals, 1 percent would still triple Biden’s winning margin four years ago.
“It’s a big threatto them if Kennedy gets on the ballot in these two states. He would be pulling more from Biden,” said Mike Noble, the founder of Arizona-based polling firm. “That road to 270 [Electoral College votes] runs through the Southwest, and for them to dismiss him is silly.”
A disproportionately younger Latino electoratemade its presence felt in 2020, and the Brookings Institution later identified Nevada and Arizona — where young Latinos make up 40 percent of all newly eligible voters — as swing states “where Latino youth participation in the 2020 election was decisive.”
But while Latinos were largely responsible for Biden sweeping the Southwest four years ago, the 2024 election has been marked by an encroaching sense of fear among Democrats due toBiden’s lack of popularityand enduring soft support among Hispanics thus far.
The DNC, which brought on muscle to dealwith the RFK Jr. challenge, said spring is always a third-party candidate’s high-water mark..
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/04/robert-f-kennedy-jr-joe-biden-00150465