After RFK Jr.’s impact endorsement of Donald Trump, pollsters and pundits alike agreed that it would have less of an impact on the outcome. Does that discussion, however, reflect the exact stereotyping that failed to deliver the Trump surprise in 2016?
The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal warned that while Kennedy’s backing could potentially help Trump moderately in battleground state,” the price could be high if it includes putting Mr. Kennedy in a second Trump Administration”, concluding that” Mr. Trump’s best response is to thank RFK Jr. for his support, make no promises about the future, and by all means avoid joint campaign images” to avoid the taint of connection with his border posts.
The 538 voting site at ABC News assured visitors that “our examination of the polling data suggests Kennedy’s support for Trump did have a minimal effect on the contest.” Kennedy, who has consistently received about 5 % of votes since Vice President Kamala Harris became the nominee, was drawing roughly equally from both Trump and Harris. [ T]he effect of his departure will be modest in terms of overall support for either candidate.
According to The New York Times analysis of the move, the endorsement “is unlikely to change the nature of the race… in part because it is difficult to predict how many of Mr. Kennedy’s supporters will vote in November.” They are less likely than others to have cast ballots in 2020, and they are also less likely to declare their intentions in November.
The very dynamic that these static, conventional assessments miss is what caused the political world to awe of in 2016 when Trump won a victory almost unheard of by the establishment: the emergence of the disenchanted, hidden voting blocs bound together only by their shared hatred of that establishment.
After the major party establishments and the corporate media marginalized his campaign, Kennedy’s supporters now represent far more than the 5 % of the electorate, as recent polls indicate. Nearly a quarter of the electorate supported his candidacy, with even stronger levels of support among younger voters, according to polls taken before he was froze out of the presidential debate ( despite exceeding the established criteria ). It was a foregone conclusion that RFK Jr.’s support would eventually vanish without access to the only platform that confers legitimacy to the majority of voters thirty-two years ago when Ross Perot won 19 percent of the vote in the general election thanks to his performance in the debate.  ,
In reality, few members of Kennedy’s coalition of anti-war, medical freedom, and free speech advocates against the D.C. power structure would have felt highly motivated to support either of the major party alternatives if RFK Jr. had simply withdrawn from the race. His supporters have the opportunity to cast a vote for his agenda rather than Donald Trump, about whom they are least enthusiastically unenthusiastic, because Kennedy not only supported Trump but indicated that he would likely be taking a role in policy and personnel decisions in another Trump administration. It is highly likely that they will turn out for Bobby rather than stay at home because Kennedy is actively campaigning for Trump and making the case that a Harris-Walz administration would be disastrous on every issue they care about, even if they are too embarrassed to tell pollsters or acquaintances that they are voting for Orange Man Bad.
Each member of this coalition is highly educated and highly motivated on their issues, including those who oppose the military-industrial complex’s foreign policy control, those who are concerned about the chronic health epidemic, and those who are deeply disturbed by the ongoing assaults on free speech. The majority of them believe they lack any influence over the current power structure and have no voice in the system. RFK Jr. may have just changed that calculus.
Some of the more perceptive pollsters realized after their historic miss in 2016 that they were simply not picking up on the anti-establishment Bernie Bros, right-wing hippies, and the hidden voters who saw a vote for Trump as their chance to give a huge middle finger to the establishment that had abandoned them and the issues they cared about. Many of them were profoundly dissatisfied with Trump’s inability to clear the swamp during his first term. That coalition, the least likely of all to show up in polling data, has once again been activated.
Brian Robertson served as Sen. Sam Brownback’s senior policy advisor for the Joint Economic Committee for more than ten years in the U.S. Senate. He held positions with the Trump administration’s Department of State and HHS.
