If you’ve been in the loop of American politics recently, you have most likely heard that Robert F. Kennedy has recently declared his Independent bid for the presidency. Leading up to this major announcement, many in Republican circles were claiming that Kennedy would potentially spoil the election for Biden, meaning that he would pull the vast majority of his support from Democrats, and increase the chance of a Republican presidency. Many Democrats believe this is an unsubstantiated claim, and that the opposite may in fact be true, citing RFK’s favorability among Republicans. But, who’s right, and who is actually backed up by numbers? What do the numbers even means?
Since September 24th, five major polls have been conducted addressing a potential three-way 2024 presidential election between Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Robert F. Kennedy. Each of the polls consistently show one thing — Kennedy is a force to be reckoned with. Averaging these polls shows Trump in the lead with 38.4%, Biden in close second with 37%, and Kennedy, although trailing, with an impressive 15%.
All of these same pollsters (with the exception of John Zogby Strategies), conducted polls, with the same set of respondents, for a potential 2024 election between just Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Averaging all of these polls shows Trump narrowly leading Biden 43.5% to 43%.
As is visibly apparent, the two frontrunners, Biden and Trump, despite holding vastly more support than Kennedy, still drop in support when he enters into the equation. Subtracting the two candidates’ support in the polls with Kennedy, from those without him, results in the percentage by which each candidate dropped in support. Averaging these percentages shows that Trump drops in support by about 5% and Biden by about 6.25%.
Operating under the likely assumption that those who are dropping their support for Trump or Biden are switching it to Kennedy, in the three-way poll, we can estimate what percent of Kennedy’s support comes from each candidate. This can be done simply by dividing the two candidates’ drop in support by Kennedy’s total support in each respective poll. Averaging out these numbers shows that about 44.64% of Kennedy’s support, comes from those who supported Biden in a matchup without Kennedy, 35.64% comes from those who supported Trump, and 19.72% comes from those who supported neither Trump nor Biden in the two-way race polls.
However, as is most likely quite apparent, Ipsos’s numbers seem to be quite out of sync with the other three polls when this calculation is conducted. That is because, Ipsos is most likely what is commonly referred to as an “outlier poll.” If we were to redo the average without Ipsos we get the following results: 50% from Biden, 42.76% from Trump, and 7.24% from neither.
What’s rather fascinating when examining these numbers is how precisely consistent the three polls are with one another. Removing Ipsos from the equation drastically changes the average support from Biden by +5.36%, from Trump by +7.12%, and from neither by -12.48%.
So, what does this mean? Well, while it does show that about 7.24% more of Kennedy’s support comes from Biden over Trump, the numbers are still very close. They are much closer in fact than the Republicans, who believe Kennedy will spoil Biden, probably expected, and too close for Democrats to continue to ignore him. How these numbers change as the election goes on is impossible to say for sure, but if these numbers remain consistent, then Kennedy will spoil Biden, and if they don’t, who’s to say for sure.
