Voters fear a rematch between Trump and Biden. Enter RFK Jr.
A looming rematch next year between President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump has left voters deeply dissatisfied with their options, eager for alternatives and curious about independent candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., new polling from six battle scenes, produced by The New York Times and Siena College.
Both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are viewed unfavorably by a majority of voters in these states, with a fifth of voters disliking either one, and enthusiasm about the upcoming election has fallen sharply compared to a poll in favor the 2020 elections were held. contest.
That frustration and malaise has led voters to entertain the idea of other options. When asked about the most likely matchup for 2024, Mr. Biden versus Mr. Trump, only 2 percent of respondents said they would support another candidate. But when Mr. Kennedy’s name was mentioned as an option, almost a quarter said they would choose him.
That number almost certainly increases support for Mr. Kennedy, the political scion and vaccine skeptic, because two-thirds of those who said they would support him had previously said they would definitely or probably vote for one of the two front-runners.
The poll results include registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The findings suggest that Mr. Kennedy is less a permanent political figure in voters’ minds than a tool to register dissatisfaction with the choice between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump.
Voters who dislike both major party candidates — a group known to pollsters and political campaigns as “double haters” — have played a major role in the outcomes of the last two presidential elections, and there are now more than twice as many as there ever were. four years ago. Mr. Trump wore them when he defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Mr. Biden won them when he ousted Mr. Trump four years later.
Now Trump has more support from these voters in five of the six states surveyed. Only in Arizona did more double haters say they would vote for Mr. Biden.
Overall, 42 percent of respondents who disliked both candidates said they planned to vote for Trump, compared to 34 percent for Biden and 24 percent who remained undecided.
“Joe Biden and Donald Trump are not the answer to the problems of 2024,” said Dylan Banks, 35, an Atlanta artist who considers himself an independent leftist. “It’s hard for me not to see myself voting in 2024, but I also don’t see myself voting for Donald Trump, or Joe Biden, or Kamala Harris.”
Both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump fared worse than a general candidate from either man’s party, the polls showed. While 44 percent of battleground voters said they would vote for Biden, 48 percent said they would support a generic Democrat. For Mr. Trump, the number rose from 48 percent to 52 percent for a generic Republican.
The distaste for both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump is likely to heighten attention around candidates like Mr. Kennedy, who dropped out of the Democratic primary last month to run as an independent, and Cornel West, the liberal professor who won the election left. Green Party to mount its own independent campaign.
Jacqueline Corcoran, 49, who lives in Carson City, Nev., and works as an operations manager at a warehouse, said she would vote for Mr. Biden in a head-to-head matchup with Mr. Trump, but was attracted to the idea of voting on Mr. Kennedy if he was also on the ballot.
Mr. Biden, she said, “doesn’t embody what I want for this country, but when you feel like you only have two choices, you choose the better of the two.”
Ms Corcoran added: “I would probably vote for a trained monkey before I would vote for Donald Trump.”
Access to ballots will be a major hurdle for independent candidates. Just qualifying for the general election as politically independent is a multimillion-dollar proposition – and that’s before lawyers for the major parties try to block them, or at least bury them under a mountain of legal fees. Mr. Kennedy’s campaign on Sunday asked for $25 from supporters to subsidize a signature-gathering team to help him qualify for mail-in ballots.
Democratic officials have already begun a sweeping effort to slow access to ballots from third parties and independent entities, including the centrist group No Labels, which has so far qualified in a dozen states. No Labels officials have said they plan to choose a nominee at a convention in April if Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump emerge as the major parties’ nominees.
The glimmer of an opening for outside candidates comes from how unpopular both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are in the presidential battlegrounds.
A majority of voters in the Times/Siena polls — 57 percent for Mr. Biden and 56 percent for Mr. Trump — said they viewed the two men unfavorably, including majorities in every state and in every demographic group except the black voters, who have a favorable view of the president.
“There are a lot of people in the United States and you’re telling me these are the only two guys we can think of,” said Julie Mock, 60, a banker in Las Vegas. “Really? This is it? These are our choices? You know, we really can’t think of someone a little more powerful and younger?”
More voters in the six presidential battleground states now viewed Biden unfavorably than in 2019 or 2020, while Trump’s preference remained largely unchanged, the polls showed. Interviews with voters surveyed found that for many, negative feelings about Mr. Biden stemmed from doubts about his mental acuity.
“The man is cognitively absent, so he can’t respond, he can’t articulate, he can’t be the man standing on stage and speaking to this nation,” said Robert Lawrence Saad, a tax attorney from Clinton Township, Michigan.
Mr. Saad, 71, has little appetite for another Trump presidency. “Actually, he’s an idiot,” he said. Given the two options, he said, he would leave the line on his ballot blank. “I do that all the time locally and nationally, if I have to,” he said.
The durability of Mr. Kennedy’s appeal to voters remains an open question. Shortly after he entered the Democratic primary in April, polls showed him drawing support from to 20 per cent of the party’s key voters.
But as he received more attention from the news media and expressed more positions out of step with the Democratic base, his numbers dropped to the low single digits.
Amy Striejewske, who is retired from the Air Force and lives in Marietta, Georgia, said she would vote for Mr. Kennedy in a three-way race but for Mr. Trump if only he and Mr. Biden were on the ballot.
“We are going backwards with Trump, and that doesn’t mean in a bad way,” Ms. Striejewske, 44, said. “With Biden, I think we will continue to stand still, if not go backwards again with the economic problems. You know, I remember paying 90 cents for a Gatorade. Now we need almost two or three dollars for that.”
No presidential candidate outside the two major parties has won a state in a presidential election since George Wallace in 1968. Ross Perot was the last person to even finish second in a state in 1992.
But many third-party candidates have won enough votes from leading figures to tip the balance of the election, including Mr. Perot, Ralph Nader in 2000, and Jill Stein and Gary Johnson in 2016.
As political polarization has increased in recent decades – especially since the mid-1990s – and people have become more partisan, there is even more reason to believe that third-party candidates have more say in voters’ dissatisfaction with choices of their party than about interest in a party. candidate from outside.
The question of Mr. Kennedy’s theoretical impact as an independent candidate has vexed officials in both parties since he left the Democratic primary.
The polls showed him attracting similar numbers of voters from Mr. Biden (21 percent) and Mr. Trump (23 percent), but the percentages varied by state. In closely divided contests, Mr. Kennedy could have the potential to change the outcome. Mr. Kennedy’s presence helped Mr. Biden in Nevada and Pennsylvania, but Mr. Trump in Georgia, the polls showed.
While Mr. Trump defeated Mr. Biden in a two-way contest in Arizona and Pennsylvania, those states were tied as polls asked voters to also consider Mr. Kennedy. Mr. Trump’s lead in Georgia increased by a percentage point over Mr. Kennedy in the race, but in Wisconsin, Mr. Biden’s lead remained the same — two points — when Mr. Kennedy was included.
Otis Riley, a maintenance director and engineer in Folcroft, Pennsylvania, said he would vote for Mr. Biden in a two-way contest with Mr. Trump, but that he would choose Mr. Kennedy if all three candidates were on his ballot in Pennsylvania.
“I don’t really know a whole lot about Robert Kennedy, but I do know quite a bit about his father and how his father operated before his death,” said 56-year-old Riley. “If his character is anything like that, that’s what my choice would be.”