History suggests third-party candidates can’t win U.S. presidential elections, largely because of the power of the major parties. But they can change the math. With eight months of campaign drama to go and eight battleground states in mind, Morning Report asked experts this week whether independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will draw enough votes to change the outcome.

Kennedy and other independent candidates “certainly could be spoilers,” conceded No Labels chief strategist Ryan Clancy, who cautioned that much could happen before November.

“If an election is really close, an effect does not have to be really large to be impactful,” YouGov senior data journalist David Montgomery added, citing recent research by the international data analytics firm. “We cannot say at this point whether in November, RFK Jr. will end up taking more votes from Joe Biden than Donald Trump.”

Findings to watch: People who say they favor Kennedy “tend to be more conservative,” and older rather than younger Democratic voters “have by far the most hostile view of RFK Jr.,” Montgomery added.

Decision Desk HQ and The Hill: Kennedy has a 41.7 percent favorability rating based on 74 polls.

Bernard Tamas, author and political science professor at Georgia’s Valdosta State University who studies third parties, said Kennedy’s name recognition is a door-opener with voters. He’s still working to get on state ballots. Tamas and Montgomery each cited historical patterns with third-party candidates to suggest Kennedy’s support is likely to ebb in polls by November but could nevertheless be impactful.

“Even if RFK drops all the way down to, let’s say, 1 percent of the vote, that could be a critical 1 percent,” Tamas said.

In the 2000 presidential election, Green Party’s Ralph Nader received 97,488 votes in Florida, while Democratic nominee Al Gore lost to Republican George W. Bush by about 537 votes (recall the hanging chads and a Supreme Court decision). In 2016, Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who is running again this year, snagged 1.1 percent of the total vote and some support in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that Democrats believed could have helped Hillary Clinton in what turned out to be an Electoral College victory by Trump, although she won the popular vote. In 1992, Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot, who relied on his wealth and a populist platform focused on budget deficits, captured 19 percent of the vote but not a single Electoral College vote in a three-way contest that Democrat Bill Clinton won in the Electoral College and incumbent Republican George H.W. Bush lost. Perot’s showing was the best for an independent candidate since 1912.

If Kennedy upends results this year, Clancy says he’ll fault the major party nominees.

“To the extent that there are Democrats that are attacking RFK for running in the independent lane, they can blame themselves,” Clancy said. “For basically two years, there has been a very organized effort — despite the fact that the public did not want this rematch between Trump-Biden — to shut down any alternatives. Now they have a wildcard in the race they have to deal with. … I think it could really backfire,” he added.

It’s been clear for months that many voters are unhappy about a White House choice between Biden and Trump. “It’s not surprising that lots of people are looking for greener grass on the other side of the fence, and for a lot of people, that means flirting with a third party,” Montgomery said.

▪ YouGov (Wednesday): Many Americans dislike both Biden and Trump.

▪ YouGov (Jan.): What do Americans think about Robert F. Kennedy?

Third-party group No Labels last week halted its efforts to find a credible presidential candidate to run on its ticket. Kennedy was never approached, Clancy said, because “it just wasn’t clear to us that Robert F. Kennedy matched up” to the group’s “common sense” policy agenda.

Successful third parties and their standard-bearers, according to studies, tend to latch on to specific issues and pressure the major parties to either adopt their policies, or adapt their own, Tamas said.

But this year, he added, “[most third parties] are not doing anything like this, which is a lot of why they’re running into so much trouble.”

Read more from The Hill:

▪ Trump and his allies believe Kennedy’s campaign could help the former president win in a close election and want to boost Kennedy’s efforts. “Trump is smart to prop him up,” Republican strategist Shermichael Singleton told The Hill.

▪ Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) asked Kennedy’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, to leave the race, concerned that the independent ticket could “tip the scales in Donald Trump’s favor.” He shared with CBS News an open letter to fellow Californian Shanahan this week. A past donor to Khanna’s campaign, she dismissed his move as “anti-democratic.” 

▪ Kennedy is polling at 12 percent in swing state North Carolina, according to data released Wednesday by Quinnipiac University. Biden and Trump are neck and neck at 48 percent and 46 percent support, respectively. “With overall voter enthusiasm for Biden and Trump lukewarm at best, close to 1 in 5 North Carolina voters look at third party candidates with open minds and the potential to throw a wrench into the works in a close race,” Tim Malloy, Quinnipiac University’s polling analyst, said.

3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY

▪ ⚖️ For the first time, and 20 years after alleged torture, three survivors of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq will get their day in U.S. court Monday against the military contractor they hold responsible for their mistreatment.

▪ 📊 The Federal Reserve, determined to shrink inflation to 2 percent, faces a challenging horizon amid a go-go economy. Soft landing or no landing?

▪ 👩🏼‍🦽 Home health care costs for the elderly are surging. In-home health costs rose 14.2 percent from March of last year.

LEADING THE DAY

© The Associated Press / Jacquelyn Martin | Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) at the Capitol Thursday.

CONGRESS

🚨 Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) — currently tussling with some House conservatives to keep his job as well as dealing with Trump, the Republican Party leader with enough sway to recast the House legislative agenda — will today join Trump at a Florida press conference. They plan to tout a proposal, already in statute, to bar noncitizens from voting, report The Hill’s Brett Samuels and Mychael Schnell. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 already explicitly prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections. It is not legal in any state for a noncitizen to cast a ballot in a federal election.

The meeting comes amid a tense stretch for House Republicans who are grappling with an increasingly narrow majority that has made passing legislation difficult and raised concerns about an effort by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a close Trump ally, to potentially oust Johnson as Speaker.

Meanwhile, the House may pass its revised Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act measure today. The Rules Committee adopted a rule 8-4 Thursday night (The Hill).

Senate Republican leaders warned that Trump’s call this week for conservatives in Congress to “kill FISA” was an unhelpful and unnecessarily divisive provocation that could drag out debate over expanded warrantless surveillance authority beyond an April 19 deadline. The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports the move is yet another example of Trump throwing a bomb into the congressional debate at the last minute.

The battle over FISA is highlighting Johnson’s evolution from a member critical of the foreign spy program to becoming a key ally in Congress, write The Hill’s Rebecca Beitsch and Mike Lillis. It’s a role that has isolated him from his former colleagues on the House Judiciary Committee, where like other GOP members he could be counted on to blast what they see as government overreach. But as Speaker, Johnson is no longer a reliable voice to promote the Section 702 reforms that panel wants, infuriating Judiciary members in declining to back a warrant requirement amendment they feel is crucial.

Democrats, too, won’t be of help to GOP leaders on the FISA vote, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Thursday (The Hill).

▪ The Hill: Johnson is negotiating with the White House as he prepares for the treacherous task of advancing wartime funding for Ukraine and Israel through the House, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said Thursday.

▪ Politico: Trump intensifies his grip on the congressional GOP agenda. From government surveillance to abortion to Ukraine, the former president is enjoying unparalleled sway over Hill Republicans’ policymaking.

▪ The Washington Post: Johnson tries to appease warring factions on surveillance bill.

WHERE AND WHEN

The House will meet at 9 a.m.

The Senate will convene Monday at 3 p.m.

The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at noon. Biden will speak virtually at 2:45 p.m. to the National Action Network Convention. He will depart the White House this evening for Rehoboth Beach, Del., where he will remain until Sunday.

Vice President Harris will travel to Tucson, Ariz., to speak at 2:30 p.m. MST about reproductive rights following the state’s Supreme Court ruling this week banning abortion. She and second gentleman Doug Emhoff will depart Arizona for Los Angeles.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken will join Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan at 8 a.m. at the State Department to meet with Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs Enrique Manalo, Philippine Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro and Philippine National Security Advisor Eduardo Año. Blinken at noon will addressthe State Department’s second annual Minority Serving Institutions Conference.

First lady Jill Biden will speak at 11:15 a.m. in Arlington, Va., at the Human Rights Campaign’s “Equality in Action” event. 

ZOOM IN

© The Associated Press / Mark Shiefelbein | President Biden met at the White House Thursday with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

ADMINISTRATION

The president said Thursday that the U.S. defense commitment is “ironclad” as he met at the White House with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida amid concerns about China’s aggressive military stance in the South China sea. The White House billed the first-ever trilateral summit with Japan and the Philippines as a potent response to China’s attempts at “intimidation” and said it would send a message that China is “the outlier in the neighborhood” (The Hill).

▪ Biden added $7.4 billion in student debt cancellations to the administration’s waves of debt relief efforts Friday, to benefit an estimated 277,000 borrowers. The administration says its menu of initiatives now total $153 billion to help up to 4.3 million borrowers eligible through various initiatives. The president made a separate announcement last week to cancel up to $20,000 for all borrowers who have a balance that has grown due to unpaid interest, analyzed independently to cost $84 billion if implemented before November, according to a Penn Wharton Budget Model (PWBM) analysis.

▪ The Hill: Prominent Democrats differ markedly when it comes to reacting to pro-Palestinian protesters. 

▪ The Washington Post: Biden plans to expand the boundaries of two national monuments in California designated by former President Obama, perhaps by Earth Day.

ELSEWHERE

© The Associated Press / Ohad Zwigenberg | Trucks last month carried humanitarian aid for Gaza through an inspection area in southern Israel.

INTERNATIONAL

ISRAEL IS PREPARING for an attack by Iran within a day or two, The Wall Street Journal reports in detail, although a decision in Tehran may not be firm. Earlier this week, U.S. intelligence reports showed that a strike against Israeli assets by Iran or its proxies could be imminent, but a source said Thursday it appeared an attack could be aimed within Israel’s borders.

Since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel, the U.S. has sought to avert escalation of hostilities in the region, including by Iran and its proxies. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Thursday to respond directly, if his country is attacked (Reuters).

“Whoever harms us, we will harm them. We are prepared to meet all of the security needs of the State of Israel, both defensively and offensively,” he said.

The top American military commander for the Middle East, Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, arrived in Israel Thursday to coordinate with Israel on what is widely expected to be imminent retaliatory action by Iran and will also discuss the war in Gaza and humanitarian aid operations there (The New York Times). The international community has been scrambling to avoid an escalation, the Journal reported. Annalena Baerbock and David Cameron, respectively the foreign ministers of Germany and the U.K., both called their Iranian counterpart, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, to ask Tehran not to attack Israel, according to British and Iranian officials.

FAMINE WARNED, NOW REAL: People in parts of northern Gaza are experiencing famine, Samantha Power, the director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, told lawmakers Wednesday (Axios). Meanwhile, aid workers said long processing delays of trucks entering Gaza are creating a backlog of aid in the enclave, thwarting the distribution of food and medical aid to more than 2.2 million people (Politico).

▪ NPR: With little fanfare, the war in Gaza enters a new stage, from high to low intensity.

▪ The Wall Street Journal: Israel is winning battles in Gaza, but risks losing the war.

OPINION

■ Latino and Black voters could elect Trump, by Patrick Ruffini, guest essayist, The Wall Street Journal.

■ Why China’s economic woes should raise concern for the West, by Barbara Kelemen, opinion contributor, The Hill.

THE CLOSER

© The Associated Press / Carolyn Kaster | Cleveland eclipse watchers saw the diamond ring effect on Monday.

And finally … 👏👏👏 Congrats to winners of the Morning Report Quiz, all game enough to tackle our version of a salute to eclipses!

This week’s readers shining brightly in the winner’s circle: Jaina Mehta Buck, Lou Tisler, Randall S. Patrick, Rick Schmidtke, Pam Manges, Carmine Petracca, Harry Strulovici, Mary Anne McEnery, Patrick Kavanagh, Stan Wasser, William Earl, Chuck Schoenenberger, Richard E. Baznik, Ned Sauthoff, Terry Pflaumer, Steve James, Joan Domingues, Jerry LaCamera and Robert Bradley.

They knew that more than 200 couples wed in unison Monday in Arkansas as part of a “Total Eclipse of the Heart Festival.”

In eclipse-ology, a diamond ring refers to a brief blaze effect as the moon appears to blot out the sun.

To witness a total solar eclipse in August 2026, try traveling to Spain.

Scientists point to the Purkinje shift during total eclipses, when rapid dimming of the sun creates fluctuating light levels and produces changes in eyes’ color perception. 

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