The campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. released a statement that the candidate will “make a historic announcement on Oct. 9 in Philadelphia, where he will share a vision of a profound realignment of American politics and the healing of the nation’s widening partisan divide.” In other words, he’s almost certainly going to announce that he’s going to run as an independent.
The campaign’s press release stated that the exact location of Kennedy’s announcement will be disclosed in the coming days. Considering how Kennedy doesn’t have Secret Service protection and he’s already had one armed nut show up at once of his events, I can’t blame them.
So far, Kennedy is attracting a small minority of the Democrats in his primary bid against President Biden, and polling indicates Republicans rate Kennedy more positively than Democrats do. On paper, this would suggest RFK Jr. is more likely to take votes away from the Republican nominee than from Biden. As MBD observed on a recent episode of The Editors, if your most important issue is objecting to the Covid lockdowns and vaccines, then independent candidate Kennedy may appeal to you more than Trump does. With that said, I would expect the RFK effect to be marginal. It’s hard to envision many Trump supporters abandoning their man just because RFK Jr. is listed as an option on the ballot.