With RFK Jr. In the Mix, One of These Candidates Takes a Hit

Various polls and pundits have been supporting the narrative that third-party presidential runs in the upcoming election, especially the one by independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., will prove more harmful to President Biden's reelection bid than former President Trump's. A new survey seems to be finding just the opposite:

• Findings: According the NBC News poll of 1,000 registered US voters from April 12 to April 16, a two-way race between Biden and Trump would leave Trump in the lead, 46% to Biden's 44%; 10% say they're not sure or wouldn't vote. Add in third-party candidates RFK Jr., Jill Stein, and Cornel West to that mix, however, and Biden takes the lead over Trump, 37% to 35%. In that scenario, Kennedy brings in 13% of voters, while Stein and West earn 3% and 2%, respectively. NBC points out that "the movement the other candidates create is within the poll's margin of error."

• Popularity: Part of those results may be tied to the fact that Republicans think more positively of Kennedy (40% positive, 15% negative) than Democrats (16% positive and a much higher 53% negative).
• Biden on the attack: Per the Hill, the president's campaign team is now taking things up a notch in its pushback against Kennedy, including with ads pointing out that most of Kennedy's entire extended family has endorsed Biden. "The issue here is leaving nothing to chance," a Democratic pollster told Politico last week.
• Discrepancy: So why is this poll different from past ones? "There's always two possibilities: One, it's an outlier," a GOP pollster involved with the survey tells NBC. "Or two, we're going to be seeing more of this, and our survey is a harbinger of what's to come."
• Who knows, though: In his piece for Slate last month, David Faris wrote that Biden and Trump "should both be terrified" of what third-party runs could mean for their own reelection campaigns. "The presidential election is about to get much more stressful for everybody," Faris predicted. "Kennedy is polling better than any third-party candidate in a generation."

(More Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stories.)