Why RFK Jr. Has Surprisingly High Approval Ratings

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has amassed a small but surprisingly consistent base of support in his longshot 2024 presidential bid – drawing an unusual patchwork of techno-libertarians, vaccine opponents and Camelot fans.

Kennedy is polling at anywhere from 15% to 20% in surveys that pit him against President Joe Biden, the overwhelming Democratic favorite. A recent Messenger/Harris poll conducted by HarrisX found Kennedy had the highest favorability rating – 45% – among declared presidential candidates from either party. (Donald Trump came in second, at 43%, while Joe Biden was in third with 40%.)

But it’s not clear whether that support will endure, especially as the public becomes more aware of Kennedy’s fringe views. 

A long-time anti-vaccine activist and conspiracy theorist, Kennedy has claimed without evidence that chemicals in the water supply are turning boys transgender, that 5G wireless technology damages human DNA and is part of a government plan “to harvest our data and control our behavior,” and that school shootings are caused by “drugs.” (His own family has rebuked his views on vaccines as dangerous and unfounded.) 

That could make it harder for Kennedy to launch a third-party bid, which some suspect he is laying the groundwork for, since Biden seemingly has a glide path to the Democratic nomination.

Kennedy’s supporters are “a mixed group,” but they share an alienation from mainstream politics, said Richard Bensel, a professor of U.S. politics at Cornell University. Many are also low-information voters. “The mainstream Democrats, who vote regularly in primaries and consider themselves loyal Democrats,” Bensel said, “they’re not his core group.” 

That is borne out by some of Kennedy’s prominent supporters. They include Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey, Silicon Valley venture capitalists and a number of well-known right-wing figures. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, Trump ally Roger Stone and former national security adviser Michael Flynn all have expressed support for Kennedy’s candidacy. 

A patchwork of support

Some of Kennedy’s support comes from voters in the Northeast who are attracted to the Kennedy name, according to David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center. Suffolk University polling (conducted June 5-9 of this year) found that 30% of Kennedy votes come from the Northeast. CNN polling also shows that 20% of Kennedy supporters said that the primary reason for support was the Kennedy name.

Limited public polling also supports the idea that non-college educated voters are most likely to back Kennedy. Suffolk University polling found that nearly half of Kennedy’s support came from non-college educated voters. CNN polling from May of this year found that 25% of Democratic voters who didn’t graduate from college support Kennedy. 

And the candidate may also be pulling in people who don’t identify as Democrats, or perhaps with any existing party. Paul Maslin, research partner at Fairbank, Maslin, Maulin, Metz & Associates, speculated that some of Kennedy’s support is coming from outside the Democratic party window, and from anti-vaxxers who are a younger disaffected group of primary voters who might not have “any ideological bent to them.” 

Protest voters 

But perhaps the most politically interesting group of Kennedy partisans is people who are backing Kennedy as a protest against Biden. That may not hold up as these voters learn more about Kennedy’s views, Bensel said – adding that this support should be thought of as votes against Biden rather than for Kennedy. 

These are well-informed partisans who might vote for Kennedy in the primary, but ultimately vote for Biden in the general election, Bensel said. “He doesn’t pose much of a threat in the sense that he is going to somehow get the nomination and defeat Biden,” he added. “What he will do is he will embarrass Biden by polling higher than expected numbers.”

Part of this protest vote category is made up of progressive, young voters hoping to register their frustration with Biden’s more centrist politics, Paleologos said. Polling from The Economist and YouGov shows that among 18-29 year olds, 40% had a somewhat favorable opinion of Kennedy and 10% had a very favorable opinion. 

New Hampshire could tell the tale

In New Hampshire, specifically, Bensel said, Kennedy is likely going to do even better than polling suggests. There’s going to be a protest vote, he explained, because the majority of the Democratic party wishes Biden wasn’t running. In a June 2023 Harris poll, 45% of respondents thought favorably of Kennedy. 

Paleologos noted that New Hampshire, where there’s pretty much an even split between Republicans, Democrats, and independents, voters are “notorious for sending a message to the country.” And if Kennedy is seen as a viable candidate in any state, then there might be a “potential domino effect,” Paleogos said. This domino effect, he explained, would make the undecided voters move disproportionately to Kennedy. 

Still, a recent poll from Saint Anselm College, based on online surveys of 1,065 New Hampshire voters from June 21 to June 23, showed that Biden is in the lead in the state, with 68% of voters there preferring Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee, versus 9% for Kennedy. 

The Saint Anselm College poll also reinforces the idea that Kennedy’s supporters are less educated, showing that 80% of respondents with a graduate or professional degree were most likely to support Biden and 8% of respondents with a graduate or professional degree were likely to support Kennedy. And 41% of people with a high school degree or less were likely to support Biden and 25% of people with a high school degree or less were likely to support Kennedy. 

“It could impact the race, not impossible,” Paleologos said, “but highly improbable that [Kennedy] would be able to win more delegates.”