For a while there, the independent ticket of ex-Democrats Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Nicole Shanahan seemed to be taking crucial votes away from Democrat Joe Biden, at least as indicated by comparing three-way and five-way (with Cornel West and Jill Stein) polls to head-to-head matchups of the incumbent and Donald Trump.
From one angle, the announcement that Donald Trump will address the national convention of the Libertarian Party later this month was unsurprising. He's in a close race for president where he needs every right-leaning voter he can get. And the Libertarian Party, whose share of the presidential vote dropped from 3 percent in 2016 to one percent in 2020, could use the attention.
There are competitive U.S. Senate races in five of the 2024 presidential battleground states: Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. And one of the narratives emerging from polling of these states is that Joe Biden is running behind his ticket mates pretty regularly.
Whatever you think of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his independent candidacy for president this year, he's already accomplished something that's fairly rare in recent American politics: registering support from over 10 percent of the electorate in national (and many battleground state) polls.