How North Carolina’s presidential election changes if RFK Jr. is on the ballot

North Carolinians reluctant to vote for either Joe Biden and Donald Trump could have another option on their ballot in November.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced this week that his presidential campaign has collected enough signatures to be on the North Carolina ballot. If the signatures are validated by election officials, North Carolina would become the largest state where Kennedy has qualified to be on the ballot.

Kennedy’s hopes of winning the White House — or even just winning North Carolina — are a long shot. Historically, North Carolina has not been a state where third-party candidates perform well. In 2020, third parties received just 1.48% of the overall vote share in North Carolina, the sixth-lowest of any state. The median vote share received by third parties in North Carolina between 1980 and 2020 was just 1.26%, according to data from Moody’s Analytics.

Still, Kennedy’s presence on the ballot could have a meaningful impact on the outcome of the election, especially in a swing state like North Carolina. While Trump carried North Carolina in the 2020 election, it was his lowest margin of victory in any state. He won it by only a 1.34% margin, and it was the only state in which he won with less than 50% of the vote.

Anticipating yet another close race in 2024, both the Biden and Trump campaigns are making North Carolina a priority. It wouldn’t take much to seal the outcome in either candidate’s favor — and a third-party candidate who could gather even just 2% of the vote could influence whether North Carolina is blue or red in November.

Michael Bitzer, a political scientist at Catawba College, said that third-party candidates like Kennedy are primarily “spoilers,” and small percentages in competitive states can have a real impact.

“Those who vote for a third party are generally helping the party that they least want in office to win because they are pulling votes away from that other major party,” Bitzer said. “Part of the battle is keeping your base together, and what third parties tend to do is they splinter off support.”

Perhaps that’s why Democrats seem especially antsy about the presence of candidates like Kennedy on the ballot. The New York Times reported in March that the Democratic Party has assembled a legal team aimed at countering candidates who try to get on the ballot in key battleground states. Trump, meanwhile, seems to have mixed opinions on Kennedy. He has criticized Kennedy as “the most Radical Left Candidate” in the race but also said “I love that he is running!” because it could siphon votes away from Biden.

National polling suggests that Kennedy is drawing support about equally from both Trump and Biden, but that’s not the case in every state. Most polls currently show Trump with a lead over Biden in North Carolina, and that lead grows when third-party candidates like Kennedy are included on the ballot, poll averages show. A new Wall Street Journal poll published this week showed Trump with a six-point lead in North Carolina on a test ballot that includes third-party and independent candidates.

Besides, voters do appear to have some appetite for a Trump and Biden alternative. A majority of North Carolinians wish they had different options in the presidential race, according to a recent WRAL News poll. In that sense, 2024 could end up looking similar to 2016, when similar disdain for Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton boosted third-party candidates like Libertarian Gary Johnson and the Green Party’s Jill Stein. Johnson alone pulled 2.74% of the North Carolina vote in North Carolina. Trump got roughly the same percentage of votes in North Carolina in 2016 as he did in 2020, which suggests that support for Johnson came from people who might otherwise have voted for Clinton.

Bitzer said he expects both major parties to readjust heading into the general election to account for the possibility of third-party support, and the party that does the best job of keeping its base together is likely the one that will win in November.

“I think that, in this state at least, it will be a battle of keeping the base together — cohesive,” Bitzer said. “And then fighting amongst that very small sliver of swing voters that could go either way.”