It turns out that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent presidential campaign might be a good thing after all. A new poll shows his running actually increases the likelihood of a Joe Biden victory.
Polling from Quinnipiac University shows that the 2024 election will be a tight one no matter what. Registered voters are almost evenly split between Biden and Donald Trump, the respective Democratic and Republican frontrunners.
Quinnipiac polled 1,610 voters during the last week of October and found that in a general election between just Biden and Trump, 47 percent of voters would back Biden while 46 percent would vote for Trump. The university said that this number has held steady since August.
But when the general field is expanded to include Kennedy in a three-way race, Biden’s lead widens. The incumbent president would win 39 percent of voters, while Trump would take a close but clear second with 36 percent support. Kennedy would get only 22 percent of voters.
Quinnipiac’s findings mirror that of another major national poll, which came out in mid-October. A survey by NPR, PBS NewsHour, and Maris found that Kennedy’s run would actually give Biden a seven-percentage point advantage over Trump.
Kennedy holds significant sway among independent voters, but he also has a huge draw for Republicans. Previously, he had been embraced by the far right for things such as his opposition to vaccines and belief in conspiracy theories.
Kennedy’s embrace of far-right talking points is expected to woo voters away from Trump—and that has angered previously friendly conservative news outlets. Kennedy seemed genuinely shocked when Fox News’s Sean Hannity turned on him during an early October interview.
Independent candidates historically perform poorly in the general election. They are more often viewed as spoilers who strip just enough votes away from one major candidate to tip the election toward the other. It’s unlikely Kennedy will pull a lot of voters away from Trump, but it’s looking increasingly likely that he could pull just enough to turn the election decisively for Biden.