Robert F. Kennedy Jr., known as RFK Jr., continues his long shot bid for the presidency in the 2024 elections, his main focus being to appear on the ballot in as many states as possible in November.
At the moment he's officially on the ballot in five states: Michigan, Utah, Hawaii, Delaware and California. His campaign said last week they'd gathered enough signatures to add North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio, Idaho, Nebraska and Iowa to the list. They claim they'll be able to achieve their goal in all of the country during the next few months.
Whether he ends up succeeding could have a large impact in the elections, as polls tend to show him with 10% of the support or more at a national level. A survey by NPR/PBS/Marist college from earlier this month among registered voters showed him with 11% of the votes in a hypothetical five-way matchup with Joe Biden, Donald Trump, the Green Party's Jill Stein and independent Cornell West.
A more recent one from The New York Times, Siena College and The Philadelphia Inquirer shows RFK Jr. with 10% of the vote in a matchup that also includes Lars Mapstead, the Libertarian Candidate Party and those who would vote for someone else or wouldn't cast a ballot if those were the choices.
A salient finding from this poll is that RFK Jr. overperforms among Latinos, getting 14% of the support among the demographic's respondents. This compares to 9% of Whites who said they would vote for him and 11% of Blacks.
Other stats show that, among likely RFK Jr. voters, 16% identified as Independents, compared to 7% of Democrats and 4% of Republicans. 19% of respondents didn't vote in the 2020 elections, compared to 8% who chose Biden and 6% who voted for Trump.
Other studies show him running could hurt Trump more than Biden, even though he initially intended to run as a Democrat. According to a new NBC News poll, the inclusion of RFK Jr. in the mix helps Biden take the lead from Trump, a contrast with the scenario in which the Democrat and the Republican are the sole competitors.
Conversely, Trump would get 46% and Biden 44% in a race between just the two of them, with the remaining 10% saying they are either not sure who they would support or if they would vote at all.
The Biden campaign, however, has put a significant amount of attention in preventing RFK Jr. from getting support from Democrats. Just last week he held an event with members of the Kennedy family who endorsed him over their relative.
Biden also made sure to get the endorsement of family members of historic Latino leader Cesar Chavez, as RFK Jr. has sought to use his uncle John F. Kennedy's historic support from Latinos to make gains with this demographic.
The endorsement, however, was somewhat symbolic, as the Biden campaign already has close ties with the Chavez family. His granddaughter, Julie Chavez Rodrigez, is the president's campaign manager.
Kennedy, on his end, is seeking to capitalize on his uncle's historic support with an initiative that includes registering voters under RFK's We the People Party, ads in Spanish and the setting up of clubs across the country.
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