Independent candidates spoil the odds in narrow rematch of Trump, Biden

A version of this story appeared in the On Background newsletter from The Washington Times. Click here to receive On Background delivered directly to your inbox each Friday.

Independent candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West are poised to upend a historic repeat faceoff between President Biden and former President Donald Trump.

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump, 77, and Mr. Biden, 81, each clinched the delegates needed to become their respective party’s presumptive nominee. Meanwhile, the two independent candidates have begun gaining access to enough ballots in November to sway what many polls predict will be a tight election.

Mr. Kennedy, 70, has collected enough signatures to appear on the ballot in New Hampshire, Hawaii, Utah and Nevada, a key swing state Mr. Biden won narrowly in 2020.

An aligned super PAC, American Values 2024, said it has the requisite signatures to put Mr. Kennedy on the ballots in the battleground states of Georgia, Arizona, Michigan and South Carolina.

The Democratic National Committee complained that the PAC’s efforts amounted to an illegal campaign contribution. The PAC announced this week that it is no longer collecting signatures for other state ballots “given the campaign’s success.”

Mr. West is on the ballot in Oregon, Utah, South Carolina and Alaska, according to his campaign, and is working on ballot access in additional swing states, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Arizona.

Political analysts and pollsters say the independent candidates’ impact on the election is hard to measure but could decide the outcome if the race is as close as the one in 2020.

Mr. Kennedy picked up 9% of the vote in a Suffolk University/USA Today poll released Wednesday. The same poll showed Mr. Biden trailing Mr. Trump, 38% to 40%.

Poll director David Paleologos told The Washington Times that Mr. Kennedy “draws evenly” from Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump, “but it depends on the individual state.”

Some polls show Mr. Kennedy winning double-digit support in general election matchups and his candidacy hurting Mr. Biden more than Mr. Trump.

He could take a bigger bite out of Mr. Biden’s support, particularly among young voters and independents who have abandoned the president in alarming numbers.

A Siena College Research Institute poll taken in November across six battleground states showed that Mr. Kennedy drew slightly more Democratic voters than Republican voters in a three-way race with Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden.

Mr. West and Green Party candidate Jill Stein “draw directly from Biden,” Mr. Paleologos said.

Mr. West, 70, is picking up only a few percentage points in national polls, but his appearance on the ballot, more than Ms. Stein’s, could jeopardize Mr. Biden’s chances in Michigan, where the outcome will likely be close.

If Mr. Biden loses Michigan, his path to winning the election becomes much more difficult. Early polling shows Mr. Trump in the lead.

Mr. Biden won Michigan by 154,000 votes in 2020 but may lose more than that in November if Democratic voters continue to protest his support of Israel’s war against the terrorist organization Hamas.

Mr. West is positioning himself to scoop up the more than 100,000 voters, many from the state’s large Muslim community, who refused to support the president in the Democratic primary. They were pressuring Mr. Biden to oppose Israel’s military response to the terrorist attack on Oct. 7.

The anti-war vote against Mr. Biden comprised 13% of all Democratic primary voters in Michigan, enough to secure two of the 117 delegates in the state.

Mr. West, a left-wing scholar and anti-war activist, sides with groups calling for a cease-fire and an end to Israel’s “occupation” of Gaza.

A primary exit poll by the Council on American-Islamic Relations found Mr. West, with 25% of the vote, leading Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump among Michigan’s Muslim voters in a general election matchup. Mr. Trump won 13%, and Mr. Biden and Mr. Kennedy each won 8%. Another 40% picked “other.”

A similar effort by the anti-war movement to snub Mr. Biden in Georgia’s Democratic primary on Tuesday garnered the support of more than 3,000 voters, according to analyses by local news outlets. Mr. Biden won Georgia in 2020 by fewer than 12,000 votes.

Mr. West criticized Mr. Biden’s State of the Union address last week. He said the president’s plan to build a port off the coast of the Gaza Strip to provide humanitarian aid to Palestinians would take months and Mr. Biden’s domestic agenda did not seriously address poverty or supporting workers.

“We’ve got to find some alternative,” Mr. West said.

Mr. West has been campaigning across the country and plans a fundraiser this weekend at a vegan cafe in Las Vegas. His campaign team is working to collect enough signatures to get him on the ballot in Nevada, another critical swing state Mr. Biden won narrowly in 2020.

Ballot access rules differ in each state. Some require candidates to name a running mate or a placeholder. Mr. Kennedy said he is considering New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers and former pro-wrestler and former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura.

Mr. Kennedy said he will announce his decision on March 26.

“If he settles that, that’ll clear the way for him to start petitioning in a lot of states where he hasn’t started yet,” said Richard Winger, publisher of Ballot Access News.