RFK Jr. Enters Presidential Race with Double-Digit Support from Biden Voters
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As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launched his presidential bid Wednesday in Boston, a new poll was released that sees him at 14 percent against incumbent President Joe Biden.
The survey of Democratic primary voters conducted by USA TODAY/Suffolk University between Saturday and Tuesday has the anti-vaccine activist and member of the Kennedy clan capturing the support of 14 percent of those who voted for Biden in 2020. Only 67 percent of Biden’s 2020 supporters said they would support him for the Democratic nomination over his current challengers. Self-help guru Marianne Williamson, who also ran in the last cycle, has 5 percent, while 13 percent remain undecided. The poll was taken by landline and cellphone and was of 600 Biden voters, identified from national and state polls from 2020 to 2022. Its margin of error is plus or minus four percentage points.
“My mission over the next 18 months of this campaign and throughout my presidency will be to end the corrupt merger of state and corporate power that is threatening out to impose a new, kind of corporate feudalism in our country,” explained Kennedy in his announcement speech, “to commoditize our children, our purple mountain’s majesty; to poison our children and our people with chemicals and pharmaceutical drugs; to strip-mine our assets; to hollow out the middle class and keep us in a constant state of war.”
Kennedy is the nephew of President John F. Kennedy and the son of former attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, both of whom were assassinated. He was best known as an environmental lawyer earlier in life, but is now most associated with his anti-vaccine advocacy, which he has been heavily criticized for, including by members of his own family.
“I bear no ill will or any kind of disappointment to any of them. They have different views of the politics of this country,” Kennedy explained Wednesday.
Kennedy drew the support of 33 percent of Biden voters who disapprove of the job the president is doing and 35 percent of those who say his policies have been “too liberal.” He was strongest among self-identified conservatives, younger voters, and those who don’t have a college degree.
“In 2020, Joe Biden received more votes than any other president in U.S. history, yet the poll tells us that those same voters are open to other Democrats to wage a spirited primary,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, as quoted in USA Today.
“Kennedy, although a long shot at this point, starts in double digits and can’t be ignored,” Paleologos explained.
