Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s independent campaign for president appears to hurt Donald Trump more than it does President Joe Biden, according to the latest NBC News polling.
In a head-to-head contest, Trump leads Biden by 2 percent. But when third-party candidates are included, Biden has the advantage, leading the pack with 39 percent of the vote compared to 37 percent for Trump and 13 percent for Kennedy. Other candidates, Jill Stein and Cornel west, take 3 percent and 2 percent of the vote, respectively.
According to the polling data, 15 percent of respondents who had picked Trump in the head-to-head match-up instead pick Kennedy in a five-way race. By comparison, Biden loses just 7 percent of his support when Kennedy and others are included in the race.
Republican voters generally approve of Kennedy, with 40 percent expressing a positive opinion compared to just 15 percent who have a negative opinion of the candidate. A majority of Democratic voters, by contrast, express a negative view of Kennedy, with just 16% viewing him positively.
“At this stage, [Kennedy’s] appeal looks to be more with Trump than Biden voters,” said Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt, who conducted the NBC News survey along with Republican pollster Bill McInturff.
The findings do contradict the results of other national polls that show a bigger third-party vote would hurt Biden more than Trump. The Biden campaign has responded to those surveys by making a concerted appeal to Kennedy voters, including a recent campaign stop in Philadelphia at which the president touted support from other members of the Kennedy family.
McInturuff said it's possible the NBC News is an outlier. But it's also possible, he continued, that "our survey is a harbinger of what’s to come."
