The battle over whether Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign will siphon off more voters for Joe Biden or Donald Trump in what’s expected to be a close election is in full swing.
Axios’ Alex Thompson and Sara Fischer looked into how often Fox News, MSNBC and CNN mentioned the independent longshot. The timing of Kennedy dropping his Democratic run and turning to an independent campaign could offer a clue.
“Right-wing media has abruptly shifted its volume and tone of coverage of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. now that he’s running as an Independent instead of as a Democrat,” the pair wrote in a piece that showed a graph of how mention of Kennedy on Fox News dramatically dropped in October after he shifted from a Democrat to an independent in the race.
According to the report: “An analysis of data pulled from the Stanford Cable TV News Analyzer shows mentions of Kennedy by Fox News fell sharply after the environmental lawyer-turned politico declared his candidacy as an Independent last October.”
As of Monday, Kennedy appeared to have secured a ballot position in another battleground state that will likely help decide the outcome of the 2024 race. Kennedy’s campaign said he collected enough signatures to appear on the ballot in North Carolina.
Trump won North Carolina by less than two percentage points in 2020.
Kennedy doesn’t stand a chance to win. But he could be a spoiler.
It appeared for a moment to be self-defeating once it looked like Kennedy’s run would actually attract more Trump supporters. However, more recent polling showed that Kennedy’s run gives Trump an edge over Biden — though it’s not ironclad, and there’s still uncertainty about how Americans might respond to an independent ticket.
Kennedy has secured access to the ballot in Utah. He and an allied super PAC, American Values 2024, say they’ve collected enough signatures to qualify in several other states, including swing states Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, but election officials there have not yet signed off.
Late last month, Kennedy chose Nicole Shanahan to be his vice presidential pick, adding a wealthy but nationally unknown figure to his independent White House bid that’s trying to appeal to voters disaffected by a rematch of the 2020 election.
Shanahan, 38, is a California lawyer and philanthropist who’s never held elected office. She leads Bia-Echo Foundation, an organization she founded to direct money toward issues including women’s reproductive science, criminal justice reform and environmental causes.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Stories by Matt Arco
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Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @MatthewArco.