After Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dropped his independent presidential bid on Friday and endorsed former President Donald Trump, there are questions about how much his departure will shake up the race.
Many national polls of late showed Kennedy garnering 3-5% of those surveyed. Last week's Washington Post/Ipsos poll showed Kennedy with 5%, while Vice President Kamala Harris got 47% and Trump had 44%. Polls taken when President Joe Biden was still in the race showed Kennedy with 10-12% of the support.
However, in last week's poll, when Kennedy was excluded from the poll, Harris' lead actually increased to 50-45.
So what does this mean for the upcoming election? Brian Seitchik, a Republican political strategist for RDP Strategies, said it's simply too soon to tell.
"You'd much rather have the endorsement than not," he said. "Its impact is really too early. Let's not forget, when he started out in this race running in the Democrat primary, it was an assumption that it was going to hurt Joe Biden, that it was going to draw votes away. But as people got to know where Bobby Kennedy stood, his opposition to vaccines, his dabbling in some conspiracies, it looked as though more Republican voters should come on board. And if you look at the polling just over the last month with Harris in the race, Kennedy's presence seemed to be a help to Trump. So it's really been sort of a mixed bag here."
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Seitchik said for most voters, the choice has always been between the Republican and Democratic candidates.
"Certainly, it seems like maybe more of these voters break Trump's way as opposed to Harris' way. But a fair percentage of them are just going to sit down, stay out of this race. So I think the impact at the end of the day is going to be minimal," he said.
Independent candidates have long struggled to gain traction. In 2020, Libertarian Jo Jorgensen topped independent candidates with 1.2% of the popular vote. In 2016, Libertarian Gary Johnson got 3.2%.
No candidate outside of the two major parties has won a state since 1968.
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However, some independent candidates have long been thought to have spoiled the chances of major party candidates. Some have believed Green Party candidate Ralph Nader hurt Vice President Al Gore's chances in 2000 in the most closely contested presidential election in generations.
Many think Ross Perot's Reform Party bid hurt President George H.W. Bush's reelection attempt in 1992.
