Rapper and fashion mogul Kanye West released his first ad for his presidential campaign Monday, 22 days before Election Day. Unable to get on the ballot in all 50 states, he's encouraging Americans to write in his name.
The ad didn't go into detail on any policy positions West holds. Instead, the underlying message was about faith and family.
"By turning to faith, we will be the kind of nation, the kind of people God intends us to be," West said in the 1:22 video.
As of Sept. 8, West was on the ballot in only 12 states, according to Forbes, with 107 electoral votes available. Even if he were to win all those states, he'd still need to pick up another 163 electoral votes by winning other states simply by write-in votes.
When he announced his candidacy in July, he had already missed the deadline for making the ballot in several states, according to the University of Virginia's Center for Politics.
West is also far behind President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden financially. Federal Election Commission reports for July 15-August 31 show West loaned $6.7 million of his own money to his campaign. He raised just $11,472.66 in separate donations.
To give a comparison of how little that is, Jaime Harrison, a U.S. Senate candidate from South Carolina, raised a record-shattering $57 million from July through September this year -- and that's for a race that affects just one state.
Many of Trump's allies believe West could siphon votes away from Biden. With a number of Trump supporters working on the ground to advance West's campaign, many Democrats view his candidacy as a dirty trick by Republicans.
West has denied the claim, but he has voiced support for Trump before, met with the president in the Oval Office and has sported one of his trademark red "Make America Great Again" hats.
The campaign for Libertarian nominee Jo Jorgensen says she is on the ballot in all 50 states. But Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins is only on the ballot in 30 states, according to Ballotpedia.
Marquette Law School poll director Charles Franklin said there’s reason to believe the third parties will have less influence than they did in 2016.
Franklin said recent history shows a falloff in third-party support four years after an election in which the Electoral College result differed from the popular result. Support for the Green Party plummeted in 2004, four years after Ralph Nader’s Green Party bid helped tip the election away from Democrat Al Gore and to Republican George W. Bush.
“It drove home to both voters and nonvoters alike that we can have very close elections, and they have to consider that in deciding whether to cast a third-party vote or not,” Franklin said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.