In politics, especially Presidential politics, conventional wisdom is often unwise. This cuts both ways politically. How many people originally thought newcomer Barack Obama would beat Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic Primary process en route to the Presidency? And need I ask the question about Donald Trump? Yes, I know in both examples there were day one believers but that of course was nowhere near the norm, even within their own parties. Barack Obama trailed Hillary Clinton by 30 points in the earliest polling in 2007 and Donald Trump polled at 1% among Republicans in his very first 2015 poll. With that in mind let’s take the case of Kanye West.
To simply say you’re running for President, as he’s now done multiple times, doesn’t make it so. There’s paperwork that must be filed with the Federal Election Commission at a minimum. That hasn’t happened yet. And then there’s the laborious aspect of qualifying for individual state ballots as an Independent unless he’d just work on a right-in campaign. But if he really were to follow through how do you think it would impact the race? How much of the vote do you think Kanye would pull? Would Biden or Trump benefit from his candidacy?
Survey Monkey has been the first to aggregate such information for StudyFinds.org and the result is surprising. According to their findings, Kayne West would pull just over 8% of the vote. Not sure how that fits in with what you might have imagined but what about this one, where does that 8% come from? Who's hurt the most, Biden or Trump?
One might imagine that Kanye, formally of MAGA, might pull more support from 'would be' Trump supporters. However, that’s not the case. In this initial surveying, Trump’s support drops by 2.6% with West in the race. Biden’s support drops by 5.7%. That’s a greater than three-point swing in favor of President Trump should he actually enter the race. This is unlikely to actually occur but if by chance it did, President Trump would likely be well served to support Kanye’s stated desire to run for the White House right now.
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