Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. failed to qualify for next week’s CNN debate by the network’s Thursday deadline, missing the opportunity to stand alongside former president Donald Trump and President Joe Biden on stage.
Kennedy did not meet CNN’s polling and ballot-access requirements for the June 27 debate, according to the news outlet. The presidential longshot needed to earn at least 15 percent support in four nationwide polls. By Thursday, he sat just above the 15 percent mark on three approved national polls.
CNN also required all participating debaters to get on a sufficient number of state ballots in order to reach 270 electoral votes needed to win the election. Currently, Kennedy only has 89 electoral votes for being present on the ballot in six states — California, Delaware, Hawaii, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Utah.
Earlier this month, his campaign claimed the candidate obtained ballot access in Texas, South Carolina, and Florida in addition to the six aforementioned states. That claim was challenged by a CNN spokesperson, who said “the mere application for ballot access” does not count as being on the ballot in any state. Nonetheless, the Kennedy campaign is working toward getting more ballot signatures from voters across the nation ahead of November 5.
“Presidents Biden and Trump do not want me on the debate stage and CNN illegally agreed to their demand,” Kennedy said in a statement. “My exclusion by Presidents Biden and Trump from the debate is undemocratic, un-American, and cowardly. Americans want an independent leader who will break apart the two-party duopoly. They want a President who will heal the divide, restore the middle class, unwind the war machine, and end the chronic disease epidemic.”
Notably, neither an independent nor third-party candidate has made it onto the national debate stage since Ross Perot’s 1992 campaign. In the final weeks before that election, Perot debated then-president George H.W. Bush and then-governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas.
The independent contender’s absence from next Thursday’s debate marks a significant blow to his campaign, as he vies for voters’ support against the presumptive Republican and Democratic nominees.
Kennedy had accused CNN of colluding with the Trump and Biden campaigns to keep him off the debate stage. By filing a Federal Election Commission complaint last month, he said the network had violated campaign-finance law in doing so.
CNN has denied the accusations, but Kennedy’s exclusion from the debate does serve the mutual interests of Trump and Biden, as he has the potential to draw some support away from either candidate. In the national CNN poll that was used for his debate qualification, he drew 13 percent each of supporters away from Trump and Biden.
Some time after Kennedy announced Silicon Valley lawyer and entrepreneur Nicole Shanahan as his running mate in March, Trump attacked the liberal scion for being a “Democrat ‘Plant'” who could help get Biden re-elected. The former president also said a vote for Kennedy would be “a WASTED PROTEST VOTE, that could swing either way.” Both campaigns are concerned Kennedy could serve as a potential spoiler in the November election.
Sufficiently meeting the debate requirements, Trump and Biden will face off next Thursday night in the first 2024 presidential debate. The next one is scheduled for September 10, set to be hosted by ABC News.
In the meantime, Trump and Biden will be formally nominated this summer at their respective parties’ conventions while Kennedy seeks to attract more support from voters on an independent ticket.