Kamala Harris May Have a New Swing State Worry

A court’s decision in Wisconsin, an important swing state in this year’s election, to keep Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein on the ballot in November could deal a blow to Vice President Kamala Harris’ chances of defeating former President Donald Trump.

On Monday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected an attempt by a Democratic National Committee (DNC) official to knock Stein off the state’s ballot this year, ruling that “the petitioner is not entitled to the relief he seeks.”

Republican Party attorneys backed the effort to keep Stein on the ballot, likely in hopes that her appeal to some left-wing voters will siphon off enough support from Harris, the Democratic nominee, to secure victory for Trump, the GOP’s nominee, this year.

Stein previously ran as the Green Party’s candidate for president in 2012 and 2016. In 2020, when President Joe Biden won Wisconsin against Trump by just over 20,000 votes, Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins did not appear on the ballot.

Some have blamed Stein for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton losing to Trump in 2016—the Green Party candidate received over 31,000 votes in Wisconsin and Trump won the state by just under 23,000 votes.

In 2020, Hawkins received little more than 1,000 votes as a write-in candidate in Wisconsin. It is not clear how many Biden voters might have backed Hawkins if his name had been on the ballot.

While it’s also unclear how many potential Stein voters might back Harris instead if she were not on the ballot, a relatively small number of votes could prove consequential if this year’s election outcome is as close as previous races.

Newsweek reached out for comment to the Harris campaign via email on Monday evening.

An average of recent polls compiled by FiveThirtyEight finds that Harris currently has a 3.6 percent lead over Trump in Wisconsin as of Monday evening. None of the polls that included Stein as an option showed her higher than 1 percent.

In 2016, Stein won around 1 percent of the vote in Wisconsin. While support for third-party and independent presidential candidates tends to diminish as Election Day approaches, a similar performance this year spells trouble for the Harris campaign if it corresponds with a decline in support for the Democrat.

Earlier on Monday, a judge delivered another dose of potentially bad news for Harris by reinstating independent presidential candidate Cornel West to the ballot in Michigan, which is also a swing state that could also prove to be decisive this year.

West, who is polling at under 1 percent like Stein, previously ran as a Green Party candidate with Stein’s backing. Republican lawyers have been supporting his efforts to appear on ballots across the country.

Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his campaign last week and endorsed Trump while announcing that he intends to remove his name from the ballot in swing states to avoid acting as a “spoiler” candidate and hurting the former president’s chances of reelection.

Stein told Newsweek shortly after Kennedy Jr. endorsed Trump that she would remain in the race and would never back Harris, regardless of concerns that she could contribute to a Trump victory.