To win the 2024 election as an independent, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is firstly hoping for an outright win, but the second path to victory is to make sure no other candidate wins 270 electoral votes.
If no candidate reaches 270 electoral votes in a presidential election, the winner is decided in a contingent election by the House of Representatives, where each state votes as a bloc.
The House has picked the president twice in American history.
In 1800, Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson were deadlocked after the electoral votes were counted. The House cast their ballots to elect President Jefferson, who received 61 percent of the popular vote.
When none of the four presidential candidates received an electoral vote majority in 1824, the House elected John Quincy Adams on Feb. 9 the following year.
“People are starting to realize that Bobby can win, with where he is in the polls,” Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, the campaign manager of Mr. Kennedy, told The Epoch Times.
“They are starting to see that, for the first time in their lifetime, the two-party system can be broken and they can vote for somebody who excites them rather than having to vote for the lesser of two evils,” she said. Ms. Kennedy is also the candidate’s daughter-in-law.
Ms. Kennedy said Mr. Kennedy could be considered a preferred candidate over former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, the likely Republican and Democrat nominees.
The prospect of Mr. Kennedy winning as a compromise candidate is relatively slim because a contingent United States election is decided by state delegations. Republicans currently hold a four-vote delegation lead, according to a tally maintained by ProPublica.
The next House of Representatives, composed of lawmakers elected in 2024, would vote in a contingent election. A consensus forecast by 270toWin based on an aggregate of forecasts by five major analytics firms sees Republicans keeping their delegation majority in the House in 2024.
Few independent and third-party candidates have won electoral votes. In 1912, former President Theodore Roosevelt ran as an independent against his former protégé, President William Howard Taft, after failing to win the Republican nomination.
President Roosevelt carried eight states and gained 27 percent of the popular vote but won just 88 electoral votes compared to Democrat Woodrow Wilson’s 435.
Independent candidate and former Alabama Gov. George Wallace won five states in 1968. He needed to prevail in only one more state with 10 or more electors to prevent Richard Nixon from an Electoral College majority.
In 1992, Ross Perot captured around 19 percent of the popular vote, won several counties, and placed second in two states, but he did not secure electoral votes in a race won by Bill Clinton over President George H.W. Bush.
Brian Seitchik, a Republican strategist and former Trump campaign staff member, told The Epoch Times that the strategy to capture enough electoral votes to send the presidential election to the House is “absurd.”
“It was talked about in 1992 when Ross Perot was running. It was talked about when George Wallace was on the ballot many years ago,” Mr. Sietchik said.
“It’s a fantasy that Republican nerds like to talk about—just like they like to talk about a brokered convention. We haven’t had a brokered convention since the 1960s, so these are just sort of political fantasies.”
David Carlucci, a former New York state senator and a Democrat strategist, told The Epoch Times that Mr. Kennedy faces a “daunting challenge” to get electoral votes.
“Regardless of your political affiliation—Democrat, Republican, or Independent—it’s undeniable that the Electoral College poses challenges to an independent candidate. The strategy of winning states necessitates a precise campaign focused on specific demographics, leaving little room for candidates like RFK Jr. to impact safe red and blue states, which constitute the majority,” Mr. Carlucci said
“With fewer than 10 swing states, an independent candidate faces an uphill battle against the targeted efforts of Democrats and Republicans in these crucial areas,” he said.
Mr. Kennedy is traveling the country to private fundraising events and rallies designed to collect signatures to get him on the ballot in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
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