Spoiler alert: Politico reports that "independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is polling as high as the low twenties in a three-way race with President Joe Biden and Donald Trump."

Dear MoveOn member,

Spoiler alert: Politico reports that "independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is polling as high as the low twenties in a three-way race with President Joe Biden and Donald Trump."¹ Or, as Vanity Fair says more bluntly, "A Bats*it Number of Young Swing State Voters Think RFK Jr. Should Be President."²

Yikes!

Meanwhile, third-party-spoiler-campaign-in-waiting No Labels has pledged to announce its candidate for the White House by early April—and Chris Christie is looking increasingly likely as its nominee.³

If you have any doubt about the stakes and who these third-party efforts will help, consider that both RFK Jr. and No Labels are getting significant funding from well-heeled Trump supporters.^4,5 This, in a year when experts expect this election to be nail-bitingly close.⁶ A year where just a few thousand votes in a small handful of states could determine the outcome. As one senior Democrat says, "If you move 7,000 people in a couple of these states, that's the ballgame."⁷

The terrifying reality is that because of the Electoral College—and how the math works for selecting the president of the United States—these seemingly small third-party challengers are dramatically increasing the risk of a nightmare scenario, in which a third-party candidate (or even multiple third-party candidates) could throw what would have been a Biden victory to Trump.

But MoveOn has a plan: Reach voters in key battleground states, educate them about the stakes, and ensure that as many voters as possible vote for Biden and other Democrats, NOT third-party spoilers.

With the RFK Jr. campaign building momentum and No Labels poised to announce its candidate any day now, we need your help to put our plan into action immediately.

Will you make an emergency $9 donation now to help MoveOn reach voters, help them understand the stakes, and defeat third-party spoilers who would throw the election to Trump, before it's too late?

Stopping third-party candidates from spoiling the 2024 election is critical work that requires patience and one-on-one conversations. And there is no substitute for it. The great news is that young voters reject MAGA by 20-point margins.⁸ But we have a great deal of get-out-the-vote work to do to reach those voters and educate them about the stakes, how the Electoral College works, and the importance of voting for Joe Biden. We're behind in our election plan fundraising, and we need your help to catch up.

Don't wake up the day after Election Day and wish you'd done more. If we keep falling behind, we could have a repeat of the year 2000, when progressives had low energy, a third-party candidate won crucial votes, and a Republican won the White House.

John, we urgently need your help. Will you chip in $9 to help fund MoveOn's efforts to have one-on-one conversations with young voters—to ensure they are registered to vote and are going to vote for Biden in 2024?

While only four third-party candidates have been able to win even a single electoral vote throughout all of American history, winning electoral votes is not necessary to impact the outcome in a presidential race. Third-party candidates have helped change outcomes in presidential elections far more often than you might think throughout American history, including, most recently, in the year 2000, where George W. Bush "won" Florida by fewer than 600 votes.⁹

Had just a small percentage of the nearly 100,000 votes garnered by Ralph Nader in Florida gone to Al Gore instead, Gore would have won the election. It wouldn't have been close, there wouldn't have been a ballot recount, and the Supreme Court wouldn't have had any recount to stop from taking place.¹⁰

In addition, the 22,000 votes won by Nader in New Hampshire were three times the size of Bush's margin of victory there. If New Hampshire had flipped to Gore, that too would have changed the outcome.¹¹

New Hampshire, a decisive state in the 2000 election, has only TWO Electoral College votes. Two votes! In an extremely close election like 2000, just two Electoral College votes was enough to get Bush to the White House. That makes it extremely concerning that RFK Jr.'s candidacy is picking up steam in Hawaii and Utah; he's already gotten enough signatures to appear on the ballot in those states.¹² He's also working on getting on the ballot in key swing states as well.

Will you chip in $9 right now and support MoveOn's plan to help reelect President Biden and Vice President Harris through targeted voter outreach? With your help, we will stop these third-party spoiler candidates from throwing the election to Trump.

Not only do third-party candidates risk throwing a close election to Trump, but if no candidate secures the required 270 Electoral College votes, it will also all but guarantee a Trump win, through a different process: throwing the election to Congress. If just 46 electoral votes go to a third-party candidate in 2024, it could create a nightmare scenario, where Congress decides the outcome of the election—which, given the makeup of Congress right now, likely throws the election to Trump. Unless, that is, we pick up lots of seats in the 2024 election, which is in our power and which MoveOn is fighting to do.

To prevent a nightmare scenario, we're initiating a comprehensive campaign designed to mitigate the risks posed by third-party spoilers and ensure the election reflects the will of the American people. Our strategy includes the following:

• Voter education and mobilization. Educating the electorate about the implications of their vote is more crucial than ever. We're launching targeted campaigns to inform voters about the dangers of a fragmented vote, the importance of voting for President Biden, the fact that there are no "safe states" (just like New Hampshire, with its two electoral votes, was not a "safe state" in the year 2000, there is no safe state to vote for a third-party candidate this year).
• Strategic outreach to surge voters. We've already identified more than 11 million surge voters—those who have shown they will vote for Democrats but may not vote consistently. Four million of these are in key states, and 1.5 million of those are contactable by phone or email. We're laser-focused on those 1.5 million voters; if we can sway even a small fraction of them to vote, it may be enough to tip the election in our favor.
• Preventive measures against Congress determining the outcome of the presidential election. The best defense against this outcome is, quite frankly, to take back control of the House and win as many seats as possible in the Senate, so if the presidential election heads to Congress for a decision, Trump will not be guaranteed a victory.
• Efforts to create a unified front. Amid the current political turmoil, the clarity and unity of the progressive message have never been more important. If progressives divide their votes between Democrats and third-party spoilers, it could lead to a nightmare scenario, and we can't let that happen. That's why we're calling on every progressive to unite and ensure that our collective voice is heard loud and clear at the ballot box.

Will you help put our plan into action? Click here to chip in $9 or whatever you can.

Our democracy and fundamental freedoms are on the line this year like never before. If we can raise the funds, MoveOn will invest more than $32 million to defeat Trump and MAGA extremists by persuading and turning out voters.¹³ But we can't do it without your help.

Will you help support MoveOn's election plan to reelect President Biden and Vice President Harris, win back the House, and protect the Senate majority?

Click here to chip in $9 or whatever you can afford.

To engage voters, with your help, we will deploy our honed and most effective get-out-the-vote method: "vote tripling." Vote tripling is organizing voters to reach out to three of their friends or family, talk to them about the issues at stake, help them make a plan to vote, make sure they're registered, and make sure they vote. In 2022, MoveOn used vote tripling to turn out 50,000 people in key states and districts who otherwise might not have voted. That's an incredibly large and powerful number of voters, since our country's elections are typically decided by exceedingly narrow margins.

MoveOn has more than 25 years of experience in elections and developed extremely impactful and cost-effective strategies to reach voters.

But one-on-one voter outreach is expensive, we're increasingly behind in our fundraising, as are many nonprofits right now, and with third-party candidates who could spoil the election on the rise, we simply can't risk having to scale back our plans.

Please: Click here to chip in $9 right now to power MoveOn's game-changing election plan to fight back against presidential third-party spoilers, stop Trump, and save our democracy.

Thanks for all you do.

–Mohammad, Sana, Alexis, Jaira, and the rest of the team

Sources:

1. "RFK Jr. and the ballot access wars," Politico, March 21, 2024
https://act.moveon.org/go/188530?t=8&akid=378408%2E40999114%2EKVfLzf

2. "A Batshit Number of Young Swing State Voters Think RFK Jr. Should Be President," Vanity Fair, November 7, 2023
https://act.moveon.org/go/188531?t=10&akid=378408%2E40999114%2EKVfLzf

3. "Would Chris Christie challenge Donald Trump and Joe Biden on a third-party ticket? Maybe." USA Today, March 21, 2024
https://act.moveon.org/go/188532?t=12&akid=378408%2E40999114%2EKVfLzf

4. "Meet the Big Money Moguls Behind RFK's Quest to Unseat Biden," Rolling Stone, February 26, 2024
https://act.moveon.org/go/188533?t=14&akid=378408%2E40999114%2EKVfLzf

5. "No Labels Exposed: Here's a List of Donors Funding Its Effort To Disrupt the 2024 Race," Mother Jones, June 23, 2023
https://act.moveon.org/go/179234?t=16&akid=378408%2E40999114%2EKVfLzf

6. "Electoral College Ratings: Expect Another Highly Competitive Election," UVA Center for Politics, June 29, 2023
https://act.moveon.org/go/185826?t=18&akid=378408%2E40999114%2EKVfLzf

7. "Democrats Are Starting to Take the RFK Jr. Threat Seriously," New York, March 20, 2024
https://act.moveon.org/go/188534?t=20&akid=378408%2E40999114%2EKVfLzf

8. "New poll highlights young voter interests for 2024," The Hill, March 4, 2024
https://act.moveon.org/go/188543?t=22&akid=378408%2E40999114%2EKVfLzf

9. "Here's How Third-Party Candidates Have Changed Elections," The History Channel, November 11, 2019
https://act.moveon.org/go/188535?t=24&akid=378408%2E40999114%2EKVfLzf

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid.

12. "RFK Jr. qualifies for Hawaii ballot," The Hill, February 29, 2024
https://act.moveon.org/go/188536?t=26&akid=378408%2E40999114%2EKVfLzf

13. "NYT: MoveOn Launches $32M+ Election Program," MoveOn, January 26, 2024
https://act.moveon.org/go/186170?t=28&akid=378408%2E40999114%2EKVfLzf

Want to support MoveOn's work? The MAGA movement's book bans have forced teachers and librarians across the country to remove books from their shelves and censor what young people can learn. MoveOn is fighting back, including by filling a "Banned Bookmobile" with books that the far right has banned and driving it to key cities and towns to raise the visibility of book bans, hand out banned books for free, and bring people together to stop censorship. To keep up the fight against book bans and the MAGA politicians who support them, we need your help.

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