Explaining RFK Jr's surprisingly strong polls

And what it means for Joe Biden.

(Robert F. Kennedy Jr.)

Two recent national polls reveal something intriguing — and telling — about the 2024 Democratic primary race: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is surprisingly popular.

Consider:

• A Fox News poll put President Biden at 62% to 19% for RFK Jr. and 9% for Marianne Williamson

• An Emerson College poll had the race at 70% for Biden to 21% for RFK Jr and 8% for Williamson.

And, as Gabe Fleisher¹ notes, these aren’t the only polls that suggest that RFK Jr. has, at minimum, double digit support within the Democratic electorate.

So, what gives?

After all, RFK Jr. is, well, a bit of a nut. He’s been one of the leading voices in the anti-vaxxer movement for the better part of the last two decades.

“The minute they hand you that vaccine passport, every right that you have is transformed into a privilege contingent upon your obedience to arbitrary government dictates,” Kennedy told an anti-vaccine rally in 2022. “It will make you a slave.”

As the New York Times noted of Kennedy:

Mr. Kennedy has effectively used his talent and one of the most prominent names in American political history as a platform for fueling resistance to vaccines that could save countless lives. His stance on vaccinations has alienated him from his prominent political family.

While his views in vaccines are the most prominent of Kennedy’s conspiratorial beliefs, they are far from the only ones.

Kennedy wrote in 2021 that he did not believe that Sirhan Sirhan had, in fact, killed his father in 1968.²

“For many years, I accepted the orthodoxy that Sirhan was responsible,” wrote Kennedy. “After all, dozens of eyewitnesses in the Ambassador Hotel pantry saw him fire his gun from just a few feet in front of my father. But in 2016, my father’s close friend, Paul Schrade, persuaded me to read Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi’s autopsy report and to listen to audio recordings and review other evidence indicating that Sirhan could not have been the murderer.”

Then there are Kennedy’s views on 5G networks. “This 5G is something entirely different, and could have almost unimaginably devastating impacts on our health + environment,” he tweeted in 2020.³

So, while Kennedy was once a respected environmentalist — and scion of his famous family — he is now in a different place. A very different place.

Which brings me back to my initial question: What gives? How the hell is a guy with RFK Jr’s. views the choice of 1 in 5 Democratic primary voters?

I think the answer to that question is a two-step process.

1. There are a not-insignificant number of Democrats who DO NOT want Biden to be the party’s nominee in 2024. A recent NBC News poll found that 51% of Democrats would prefer Biden not to run again. 51%!

   Those Democrats tend to be on the younger end. And they want an alternative — any alternative! — to Biden. That phenomenon also explains how Williamson, an asterisk in the 2020 race, is clocking 8 and 9 percent of the vote.

2. The Kennedy name is still VERY well known in Democratic politics. My strong guess is that the vast majority of those Democrats opting for RFK Jr. in a primary against Biden have ZERO idea what he actually believes — on vaccines or anything else.

   What they do know is that they don’t want Biden and they know the Kennedy name.

   It’s not clear to me how many of them would stick with RFK Jr. if informed of his actual views — although it would seem that most of them would probably abandon RFK Jr. for Williamson as opposed to Biden — per point #1.

Understanding the “why” behind RFK Jr.’s surprisingly strong numbers is one thing. Figuring out whether it will matter to Biden as he pursues the party’s nomination is another.

And you can’t have that conversation without remembering that Biden has drastically altered the 2024 nominating calendar — back-benching the usually-first Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary in favor of putting South Carolina at the front of the calendar.⁴

While Iowa seems to have somewhat accepted its fate, New Hampshire most definitely has not. “We're going first no matter what,” New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, said back in January. “The White House badly mismanaged this, and the blowback has been extraordinary from all levels of the Democrat party.”

So, what seems likely to happen is that New Hampshire will hold the 1st vote — even though it will be sanctioned for doing so by the Democratic National Committee.

Biden won’t campaign in the state. Which could mean he loses.

As NBC’s Alex Seitz-Wald wrote late last month:

While those contests will most likely be inconsequential to the delegate math of Biden’s re-nomination, it may nonetheless be embarrassing for the president of the United States to nominally lose to Williamson, a self-help author who has never held elective office, or Kennedy, an anti-vaccine activist with a famous last name. They are the only other Democrats in the race at the moment.

While Biden's campaign would likely shrug off the outcome of contests it didn't even compete in, the situation could be nerve-wracking for ever-anxious Democrats and spark new questions about a bigger-name Democrat challenging Biden.

Yes to all of that.

Look. RFK Jr. isn’t going to be the Democratic presidential nominee. Not even close. His beliefs are little known to the broader Democratic electorate. If he ever started to surge in the race, Biden could destroy him with a single TV ad that just outlined some of his more controversial views.

But, that doesn’t mean his candidacy is irrelevant. His presence in the race — and the willingness of so many Democrats, relatively speaking, to support him — speaks to the lingering dissatisfaction with Biden as the nominee.

That said, it’s virtually impossible for me to see any substantial portion of Democrats — even those most adamantly opposed to Biden — voting for Donald Trump in the 2024 general election.

Which likely means this is a temporary annoyance for Biden. But an annoyance nonetheless.

1. You should subscribe to Gabe’s daily newsletter. It’s here.

2. RFK JR was advocating, in the piece, for the release of Sirhan Sirhan.

3. It’s worth reading the debunking of the 5G conspiracy theories here

4. Biden did this as payback for South Carolina saving his candidacy in 2020. After finishing out of the money in the first three - Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada — votes, Biden stormed back by winning the Palmetto State primary overwhelmingly.