The North Carolina State Board of Elections won't have data on new party registrations for “We the People” until mid-August, but it's already clear the new political party's certification heightens the tumult across the political landscape.
The nation is grappling with the horror of an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, Democrats are riven by questions over the viability of President Joe Biden's re-election campaign, and now North Carolina voters — especially younger, disaffected ones less connected to the established parties — will have another alternative option at the top of the ballot.
"So, if you're the kind of person who says, 'I hate these two choices we have, I don't like them at all, I'm going to stay home.' Well, now there's another candidate on the ballot that you might have actually heard of, maybe you're going to show up and vote," said Chris Cooper, professor of political science at Western Carolina University and author of the recently published book Anatomy of a Purple State: A North Carolina Politics Primer.
That other candidate is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., We the People's choice for president. Certification of We the People allowed Kennedy's campaign to skirt much more onerous rules for independent candidates seeking to get on North Carolina's ballot by petition.
The state's bipartisan elections board voted on Tuesday to recognize We the People as an official party. The vote came after a delay during which the five-member board's three Democrats wanted to examine more deeply the tactics We the People used to collect signatures for recognition.
Who will Kennedy draw votes from?
The board's Democratic majority also ordered staff to investigate petition efforts by “Justice for All,” a third party whose presidential nominee is Cornel West. In that case, after one of the independent petition collectors failed to comply with a subpoena, the board denied Justice for All recognition in a split vote, 3-2, with Democrats in the majority.
With Kennedy's addition to the ballot, that means North Carolina voters will have six presidential candidates to consider: Kennedy, Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver, the Green Party's Jill Stein, the Constitution Party's Randall Terry, former President Trump, and Biden, who is facing mounting pressure to step aside weeks after a calamitous debate performance against Trump last month.
One big question for the two major parties is which one of their candidates is likely to lose a significant number of votes to Kennedy, who has much greater name recognition than most, if not all, of the other third-party candidates.
"I think there's a few possibilities," said Cooper. "One is that it does pull from Joe Biden."
That, Cooper explained, is because the Kennedy name has strong ties and a historic association with the Democratic Party and that RFK Jr. is making inroads with younger voters, a key base for Biden.
However, Cooper also said Kennedy is a non-traditional candidate, as is Trump, and for that reason could pull votes from the former president's campaign.
"I think it's possible that Kennedy pulls from neither, that he actually just motivates a few extra people to vote and ultimately it'll be an electoral wash," Cooper concluded.
We're in the 'summer of chaos,' political scientist says
Cooper said that it's typical to see a spike in third-party interest among voters in July and August but that as November approaches, when the political realities settle in, the vast majority of voters end up going with one of the established party candidates.
Professor Michael Bitzer, who chairs the politics department at Catawba College and authored the book Redistricting and Gerrymandering in North Carolina: Battlelines in the Tar Heel State, agreed with Cooper.
"Traditionally," Bitzer said, "what we tend to see is the closer we get to November the smaller the impact third parties tend to have as a percentage of folks saying 'Yes, I'm voting for this third-party option."
Bitzer said to get a grasp on this year's dynamics, one should look back to 2016.
"We had two wildly unpopular candidates at the top of the ticket, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, and in North Carolina we saw the biggest spike when it came to third-party votes," Bitzer said.
In 2016, Trump won North Carolina with 49.8% of the vote to Clinton's 46.1%, while Libertarian Gary Johnson picked up more than 130,000 votes, or 2.7%. Jill Stein garnered a little more than 12,000 votes, or .26%, as a write-in, and 1% of the vote went to miscellaneous write-ins.
This year, Bitzer supposed, barring a major change such as President Biden ending his re-election campaign, there could be an even higher level of disaffection among voters that benefits third parties.
"Since that presidential debate," Bitzer said, referring to last month's televised showdown between Trump and Biden, "it's been the summer of chaos when it comes to politics."
And, according to Bitzer, adding Kennedy to the North Carolina ballot further ensures we are heading into a "highly contentious, highly energized, highly divisive" fall campaign season.
Editor's note: This story has been updated to note the board voted 4-1 to recognize We the People party.
