Seems like this has got to be mostly about people not knowing what a kook he is and just having vaguely positive associations with the famous name.
Exactly, a good portion of that 20% don’t know him well enough yet.
tl;dr created by smmry.com, the original was reduced by 66%:
RFK Jr. ranks higher in favorability than other major 2024 candidates: poll Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist and environmental lawyer who is running for the Democratic nomination for president, has a higher favorability rating than many of the other 2024 presidential candidates, according to a new poll.
The poll from The Economist and YouGov released Wednesday showed Kennedy was viewed favorably by 49 percent of respondents, giving him the highest net favorability rating of 19 points.
Biden had a minus-9 net favorability rating, while Trump had a minus-10 net favorability rating.
I’d be interested to see how much of his favorability comes down to name recognition and people on some level attaching his father’s policy preferences to him. It’s also six months before anyone is really paying attention to the primaries, or even before anyone really knows what he’s running on. Once he starts talking about the evils of vaccination and how Ukraine needs to just surrender to Russia already, his numbers will come down.
Reads “Jr”. Sees picture: gray haired boomer. So much for the “new generation”.
Nobody takes this antivax clown seriously.
People who only know his name do
In a poll taken of his grandparents, who also rated him the coolest and most handsome candidate in the race.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/25/politics/cnn-poll-democrats-2024/index.html
Within his own party, 60% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters say they back Biden for the top of next year’s Democratic ticket, 20% favor activist and lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and 8% back author Marianne Williamson. Another 8% say they would support an unnamed “someone else.”
Biden’s primary supporters are largely locked in: 58% say they would definitely support him and 42% say that they could change their minds. In contrast, those backing other candidates are far from committed, with just 19% in that group saying they definitely will support their first-choice candidate and 81% saying that they could change their minds.
The poll suggests that Biden would likely win the support of the vast majority of Democratic-aligned voters in 2024. Just 14% in that group say they wouldn’t back him in the primary. And only 7% say they definitely would not support him in November 2024 should he win the party’s nod.
It looks like RFK Jr would draw votes away from republican candidates in a general election. The issue, though, is he can’t make it past the primaries. He has the same issue as DeSantis, you can’t win a primary without the support of trump, and you can’t win the general with it.
He’s crazy enough to run independent, and he’s got the Bitcoin vote to fund him. If Trump loses the nomination, I could see the MAGAs switching to him; he’s an antivaxxer so he’s halfway there, all he needs to do is say some racist shit and he’ll clinch it. Perfect spoiler. He’s the candidate I endorse on TruthSocial.
It is quite the conundrum. I hope the court cases don’t distract Trump from his attacks on DeSantis.
Why are we even pretending the distaff Williamson is even serious?
