Why RFK Jr.'s poll numbers are basically bullsh*t, for now.
Polling firms have been conducting nationwide polls with RFK Jr, Cornell West, and Jill Stein's names. But these candidates are not even on a majority of state ballots.
Last week, Roanoke College released a poll in Virginia showing that in a two-way race, President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump were deadlocked at 42% of the vote. However, when they added independents Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornell West, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, these three candidates capture 12% of the vote, with Biden holding a 2% lead.
There one small problem with this scenario. As of now, none of these third-party candidates are actually on the ballot in Virginia. According to their campaigns, all three are in the process of getting ballot access. Therefore, any poll including candidates that aren’t even on the ballot yet either shows that the polling firm doesn’t know much about the state, or they are trying to provide numbers that really don’t mean anything.
In nationwide polls, it’s been quite common to see Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornell West, and Jill Stein on the ballot. But as of now, they are off more ballots than they are on, even in the case of the well-established Green Party.
Let’s start with RFK Jr. Currently, he is currently only on 17 ballots as of the time of this posting, according to his website. However, he is only on the ballot in four swing states, which are Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Michigan. All the others are “in progress”, according to the website.
As for the Green’s Jill Stein, she is on 21 ballots, according to her website. However, she is on more swing state ballots, which includes Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Maine’s 2nd Congressional District.
As for Cornell West’s website, he is only on seven presidential ballots, according to his website, with only one, North Carolina, being a swing state.
As for RFK Jr., he’s on the ballot in states that consist of 47.2% of the nation’s population. If RFK Jr. had, let’s say, 14% like was stated in a recent Quinnipiac poll, that number, at best, should be cut in half because of the lack of ballot access. Basically, these “nationwide” polls are asking people if they would vote for someone who isn’t even on their state’s ballot.
Still, the way that candidates have qualified for the ballot might not be as straightforward at one might think. For example, to run as an independent in California, an independent candidate needs to get 219,403 signatures on the ballot to qualify. That would be an impressive feat for any independent candidate. However, the Green Party is a registered party in California, and RFK Jr. running, ironically, on the American Independent Party, a party started by George Wallace in 1968, which would have been his father’s opponent had he not been assassinated.
I still contend that those who respond in this polls with RFK Jr., Cornell West, or Jill Stein, are basically non-voters who are probably mentioning these names because they came up on a Joe Rogan podcast. And if we want to look at the “success” of Joe Rogan in vote choice scenarios, just look at Andrew Yang’s “illustrious” political career. Yeah, he couldn’t even get a single delegate in 2020.
Take these five-way polls with a large grain of salt. At the end of the day, it’s unlikely that all of these candidates will be on all of the ballots. Illinois, for example, is and extremely hard ballot for independent candidates to qualify. And each state has it’s own qualifying method. Only time will tell what the ballots will actually look like.