Robert F. Kennedy Junior announced today that he is dropping out of the Democratic Party's primary race and will instead mount an independent bid for the White House. Both Republicans and Democrats are already worrying over how this will affect the race next year, since third-party bids can often act as spoilers. But next year, depending on what state you live in, you may have not just three but instead four, five, or perhaps even more names on the presidential ballot.

Last week, Cornel West also announced an independent bid for the presidency, after flirting with an attempt to be the Green Party's nominee. And the group No Labels has tens of millions of dollars in the bank which they are going to use to get their party on the ballot in as many states as they can, although they don't really have a candidate or even any sort of concrete political agenda at this point. Politicians such as Senator Joe Manchin and Utah's Jon Huntsman are reportedly considering vying for the No Labels nomination. And then there will also be the eventual nominees of both the Green and Libertarian Parties as well. So there should be numerous "third parties" for many voters to choose from.

Third parties do not traditionally do well in presidential politics, of course. These candidates usually only register at the margins. But a lot of presidential elections are actually determined at these margins, so third parties can indeed influence the outcome (even while losing). Because of the vagaries of the Electoral College and the winner-takes-all nature of most states, even an incredibly strong third-party candidate is almost guaranteed to lose badly in the only vote that counts. H. Ross Perot pulled in an astounding 19 percent of the popular vote -- roughly one out of every five voters -- in 1992. He got millions of votes. But he didn't win a single state, and thus wound up with precisely zero Electoral College votes.

Third parties can be seen as spoilers, as Ralph Nader's candidacy was in 2000. Al Gore missed winning Florida by an incredibly small amount, while a much bigger amount of votes went for Nader. The easy conclusion to come to is that Nader "stole" votes from Gore and if Nader hadn't run, Gore would have emerged victorious. But nobody can say this for sure. Third-party voters are often extremely disenchanted and frustrated with the two-party system, meaning that a whole lot of them might just have stayed home and not voted if Nader hadn't run.

This "spoiler effect" is worrying both the Republicans and the Democrats. Let's start with the easiest one -- if Cornel West draws votes from anywhere, it is going to be from Joe Biden. West is much further left than Biden, so it's hard to see many on the right deciding to pull the lever for him.

But R.F.K. Jr. isn't so easy to pigeonhole on the political spectrum. Sure, he's a Kennedy, and the Kennedy name has long been associated with the Democrats (since his uncle occupied the Oval Office and his father was assassinated running for it). But his views are not exactly conventional Democratic views. He is (as many have pointed out) "Republicans' favorite Democrat," or at least he was, while he was challenging Biden in the Democratic Party. But now that he's running as an independent, many are wondering if he'll "steal" more votes from Donald Trump than from Joe Biden. Kennedy appeals mostly to conservatives and conspiracy-theorists, after all.

Politico has a deep dive into R.F.K. Jr. up today, which concludes that his campaign is a personal crusade against what he identifies as "censorship." This is a popular argument to make on the right, these days. But he's mostly talking about the "censorship" of social media companies kicking him off their platforms for spreading conspiracy theories about vaccines (and other subjects). As the article points out:

Like many people from both the right and the left who rail against censorship, Kennedy's views on the matter tend to align with his political incentives and don't particularly cohere. He talks a lot about the need to express himself on social media, but little, for example, about limits some school districts are placing on books in their library or what college professors can teach. Still, it is this question of censorship, even more than his widely discredited anti-vaccine work, or arguments against Covid-era public health measures, or his long and estimable career as an environmental lawyer, or his equally long crusade against a government which he says is willfully deceiving the people it claims to serve, that is the true cornerstone of his run for president.

The article gives an in-depth look at what it is like to hear Kennedy speak on the campaign trail, which is convenient since it sounds like it'd be an absolute ordeal to sit through a two-hour-long R.F.K. speech:

When Kennedy kicked off his candidacy in April at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel, he began by talking about the history of the Kennedys in America, segued into the origins of the American Revolution (it was really, he claimed, about "the corrupt merger of state and corporate power"), bounced over to Gary Powers getting shot down over the Soviet Union in his U-2 spy plane (that was 1960), then on to the Pentagon Papers, his father's 1968 presidential campaign, the Penn Central railroad's pollution of the Hudson River, how God reveals himself through nature and art -- he then paused, saying he was about halfway through -- before launching into a discourse on Covid, lockdowns, censorship (of course), the vanishing middle class, how in March 2020 "public health authorities went to every Black neighborhood and locked down the basketball courts" (which, what?) the smallpox outbreak that tore through the Continental Army in 1775, the Cuban Missile Crisis, industry capture of government agencies, the chronic disease epidemic, the origins of autism, the war in Ukraine, the national debt, WMDs in Iraq, vaccines and Pete Buttigieg's stewardship of the Department of Transportation (he's not a fan). Almost entirely missing were any plans to tackle Democratic priorities like raising wages, decreasing inequality, combating climate change, reducing gun violence or wrestling with the spiraling cost of health care.

. . .

All of which is to say, the man can be kind of exhausting. If you have ever found yourself in a college dorm room talking with someone who can't believe how you don't know how Mumia Abu-Jamal was framed or about the fluoride in the water because you have been turned into a sheep by the corporate overlords who control the media and the government, well, talking with Kennedy is like that.

Of course, it is R.F.K. Jr.'s ranting about COVID vaccines which endeared him to the rightwing media. They have been gleefully providing a platform for him to speak for months now, since it was seen as a way to undermine Biden in the primaries. If Kennedy could pull in double digits (he began by polling at 20 percent of Democratic voters, although he has slipped to 15 percent now), it would be massively embarrassing for Biden. However, now that Kennedy is going partyless, Republicans see R.F.K. Jr. as a possible threat to them in the general election. The Republican National Committee put out a list of reasons why GOP voters shouldn't give Kennedy the time of day:

Make no mistake -- a Democrat in Independent’s clothing is still a Democrat. R.F.K. Jr. cannot hide from his record of endorsing Hillary, supporting the Green New Deal, fighting against the Keystone Pipeline, and praising A.O.C.'s tax hikes -- he is your typical elitist liberal and voters won't be fooled.

At least, they hope their own voters "won't be fooled" by Kennedy.

The rather quixotic No Labels effort is also seen as a tossup as to which major party it would hurt the worst. They have talked about putting forth a slate with a Republican and a Democrat on it, although it'll be an interesting struggle to see which emerges as the presidential candidate and which has to settle for the veep slot. It'll also be interesting to find out if Joe Manchin has any base of support anywhere, if he winds up the eventual No Labels nominee.

As I said, this all doesn't even take into account the nominees from the Green Party and Libertarian Party, both of which have done the legwork of getting their parties on as many state ballots as possible before this election cycle. There is no guarantee that West, Kennedy, or No Labels will be on 50 state ballots next year (each state has its own hoops to jump through -- it requires a concerted effort to get onto every state's ballot).

What will happen if it is a five-way race? Nobody knows. If Joe Biden and Donald Trump have to share the ballot with West, Kennedy, and two or three more third parties, it truly is anyone's guess what it'll all mean when the votes are counted. The likeliest outcome is it won't matter all that much in most states. Voting for a third party is largely seen as "throwing your vote away" by most voters. Democrats will say: "A vote for West is a vote for Trump," while Republicans will warn: "A vote for Kennedy is a vote for Biden," and most voters will accept that logic.

But not all of them will. Some are so disgusted by the same two choices being offered as the last presidential race that they'll proudly cast their vote for a protest candidate. Some Republicans who can't stand Trump and would have stayed home will turn out to vote for one of the third-party candidates. Some Democrats who think Biden is too old or just don't like him will vote independent as well.

The real question is what will happen in the handful of battleground states that usually see very small margins determine their presidential vote. What will the effect of West or Kennedy or Manchin being on the ballot have in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and all the other purple states? That is where American presidential elections are decided these days, so even marginal shifts in the vote there can be determinative for the entire race.

We won't even be able to guess at any of this until we see some actual polling which includes independent and third-party candidates. My guess is that Kennedy will get more support than any of the others. Many Americans who don't pay much attention to politics will hear his name and not know anything else about him other than that he's a Kennedy, and more than a few of them will give him the benefit of the doubt and tell a pollster on the phone that they're for him.

Will R.F.K. Jr. pull more votes away from Trump than from Biden? Or will it work the other way around? That is going to be an interesting question to watch, as we get a lot closer to the general election campaign next year. That's about all that can be said for certain at this point.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant