There are few things you can be more certain of in life than a Democrat or a Republican winning a US presidential election. We don’t usually do third parties or independents in this country. Chances are Democrat Joe Biden or Republican Donald Trump will be elected a year from now.
But it would be foolish to dismiss what the current polls are telling us: Independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is polling higher than any independent or third-party candidate in a generation. He, along with other non-major-party candidates, has a real chance to affect the outcome of the 2024 election.
Take a look at a recent Quinnipiac University poll: Kennedy hit 22% among registered voters. That struck me as very high, so I went into the polling vault.
The last independent presidential candidate to earn over 20% support in a poll within a year of the election was Ross Perot in 1992. He ended up getting 19% of the popular vote.
Perot is a bit of an exception in that independent or third-party candidates usually fade as an election nears. John Anderson was polling above 20% during the 1980 campaign, before pulling in just 7% in November. In 1968, former Alabama Gov. George Wallace topped out at 21% in pre-election polling as a third-party candidate before picking up 14% when the votes were cast.
The amazing thing, though, is that these three have been the only non-major-party candidates in the history of polling to hit more than 20% within a year of the election. Kennedy is now part of this select group.
Moreover, those three prior candidates ended up getting above 5% (if not 10%) in the final outcome.
We don’t know where Kennedy will end up, obviously; however, his numbers in the swing states should be turning heads. According to New York Times/Siena College surveys, Kennedy was in the high teens to upward of 25% in the six closest states that Biden…
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