Less than a week before Election Day, third-party presidential candidates are still an unknown factor in key swing states, where dozens of Electoral College votes are on a razor’s edge and getting even 1% could make the difference .

Democrats, traumatized after third-party candidates ate into Hillary Clinton’s vote share in 2016, launched a full-court press early in the election cycle to kneecap groups like No Labels and candidates like the Green Party’s Jill Stein, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. , who ran for office as a Democrat before becoming an independent and subsequently supporting former President Donald Trump, and Cornel West.

The Democratic National Committee has poured millions of dollars into portraying them as, at best, impostors and, at worst, as deceitful vessels of Republican subterfuge. Outside groups, including centrists and progressives, formed unconventional alliances to pave the way for a head-to-head showdown between Trump and President Joe Biden, and later Vice President Kamala Harris.

Employees involved in the effort were satisfied with the effort. No Labels, once a centrist ‘unity ticket’, eventually folded. Kennedy dropped out and became more aligned with Trump, potentially hurting the former president in states where he remains on the ballot. And Stein and West are at the bottom of the polls.

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But no one rests on their laurels.

“Democrats don’t take anything for granted. “We have learned the lessons of 2000 and 2016, when third-party candidates helped throw the White House to the Republicans, and we will not allow a repeat of that in 2024,” Lis said. Smith, a DNC third-party communications advisor.

Still, “we’re not going to pat ourselves on the back, but we are satisfied that we took the threats from third parties seriously,” she said. “At the beginning of this cycle, people were talking about No Labels and RFK, Jr. non-stop. But because of what the Democrats did, neither of them ran or played a role in this race.”

Democrats were dogged by the 2000 and 2016 election results, when they claimed that third-party candidates collected enough swing-state votes to deprive their nominees of victory. That danger would not go unnoticed this year, they decided.

The DNC has created an internal group specifically designed to message third-party candidates. Progressive groups like MoveOn and center-left organizations like Third Way united to clear the runway for Biden and later Harris to face Trump one-on-one.

A third-party No Labels “unity ticket” was rejected after Democrats portrayed the effort as a spoiler and lobbied heavily against potential candidates not to join the crusade. Digital operations were set up to quickly highlight controversial comments from candidates like Kennedy, Stein and West. Millions of dollars were pumped into ads highlighting Republican operatives’ support for supportive super PACs. And Democrats filed lawsuits to prevent other candidates from getting a spot on swing-state ballots in the first place.

Democrats now told ABC News they are happy their work has made a difference.

Kennedy, partly because of Democratic efforts and partly because of his own views on issues like vaccines and COVID-19, was actually seen as more aligned with Trump than with his family’s political legacy. While Stein was still voting in six of the seven swing states, she saw her support fall to normal levels, fearing that frustrations with Biden would cause support to rise. And Democrats no longer view the West as a serious threat.

“There was another point in the race where No Labels, where RFK was stronger, where I think the threat was a little more existential. I think the threat is still troubling, but I think Democrats have worked hard to convince voters who might be persuaded by third-party candidates of an alternative point of view about what those candidates offer and also about the risk associated with parking a protest vote for those candidates,” said Joel Payne, Chief Communications Officer of MoveOn.

“Third parties are certainly a factor, but I don’t know if they are the same factor at this point in the race as they were, say, six, nine, 12 months ago.”

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Yet their existence on the ballots at all poses a risk to both parties, and there is little either party can do about it.

Stein is on the ballot in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The Supreme Court denied Kennedy’s efforts to remove himself from the ballot in Michigan and Wisconsin. Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver is also on most ballots.

Democrats can bash Stein all they want, and Kennedy can shout from the rooftops about his support for Trump, but operatives say they are all but guaranteed to win some marginal support. Ultimately, operatives said, some voters are immobile — and in races won or lost on the margins, getting even 1% of the vote can make a difference.

“If you’re still a Jill Stein voter, and you think this will have an impact on the outcome that could help Trump, then in the end we probably wouldn’t get you anyway. So I think 1% is right. probably realistic, but if Chase Oliver gets 1%, that’s a Trump problem too,” said Jim Kessler, co-founder of Third Way.

Both sides could be particularly concerned in Michigan — anger over Biden’s handling of the Gaza war could push some members of the state’s large Arab population away from Harris and toward Stein, and with Kennedy still on the ballot, he risks Trump’s ability to take advantage of that dynamic.

A CNN/SSRS poll released Wednesday showed Kennedy with 3% of the vote in Michigan and Stein with 2%. West also polled 1%, although Oliver did not receive enough support to register. In Wisconsin, Kennedy and Stein each received 1%, while Oliver and West did not register. In Pennsylvania, Stein and Oliver each received 1%.

“They’re going to gain a few percentage points, and that could affect the outcome of a close election, which all polls show is likely to be very close,” said nonpartisan pollster Bernie Porn of Michigan.

And in an election cycle that has already seen one president drop out, two assassination attempts, 34 felony convictions and more, every question mark offers another opportunity for uncertainty.

“You could see someone playing a spoiler when the race is this tight in many of these states,” said GOP pollster Robert Blizzard. “I don’t believe Trump has ever gotten above 50 in Pennsylvania, Michigan or Wisconsin before, and yet he has won those states at least once before. And so, third parties, accommodate voters concerned about Harris and fatigued by Trump. But I just don’t know what role they’re going to play

Yet Democrats are the party most publicly wringing their hands over the threat Stein and others pose, loath to relive their past traumas. And at home, officers who spoke to ABC News said the party had done as much as it could.

“What we can do right now is ensure that voters are only doing this out of laziness, that they know the consequences of that choice. And ultimately it’s up to the voters,” Kessler said. “I am satisfied that the effort is robust.”

Third-party candidates could be swing-state spoilers even after intense effort by Democrats originally appeared on abcnews.go.com