Third-party presidential candidates could give President Joe Biden a boost above former President Donald Trump in November, according to a NBC News poll published Sunday.
Preliminary polling leading up to Election Day has showed Biden and Trump to be in for a tight race. While the former president has recently appeared to take the lead in several key swing states like Arizona and Michigan, several national polls have favored Biden winning, often by only a handful of percentage points.
Several third-party and independent candidates have also emerged ahead of November, with many voters indicating that they hold an overall negative view of Biden and Trump, who are the presumptive nominees for the two major parties. Democratic strategists previously warned that independent options could upset Biden’s chances, although NBC News’ survey released on Sunday showed that third-party choices like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may actually end up taking votes away from Trump instead.
According to the poll, which was conducted between April 12 to 16 and is based on the answers of 1,000 U.S. adult voters, Trump leads Biden by 2 percentage points in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup in November. However, when voters were presented with a five-way ballot, which featured Biden, Trump, Kennedy Jr., Green Party candidate Jill Stein and independent Cornel West, Biden led Trump by 2 points.
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The results of the five-way matchup were: Biden (39 percent), Trump (37 percent), Kennedy Jr. (13 percent), Stein (3 percent) and West (2 percent). The former president lost 15 percent of his voters to Kennedy Jr., while Biden lost 7 percent.
The poll’s margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
Newsweek reached out to Trump and Biden’s campaigns via email for comment.
Kennedy Jr., the son of ex-U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, originally launched his campaign as a Democrat before declaring himself as an independent candidate.
The former president was once supportive of Kennedy Jr.’s campaign, who has attracted support from many conservatives for his skepticism on vaccines among other issues. However, Trump has since flipped his opinion of him saying in a campaign video earlier this month that the independent “is the most radical left candidate in the race.”
At the time, Kennedy Jr.’s campaign press secretary Stefanie Spear told Newsweek via email that Trump and Biden are “the two most unpopular candidates in living memory” while Kennedy Jr. was transcending “the right-left paradigm.”
Sunday’s poll found that the majority of respondents do not support Biden nor Trump. Over half of those surveyed (52 percent) said they feel somewhat or very negative about Biden, while 53 percent said the same thing about Trump. In addition, 32 percent said they held an overall negative view about Kennedy Jr.
Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates, who conducted this survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies, told NBC News that “Americans don’t agree on much these days, but nothing unites the country more than voters’ desire to tune this election out.”
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.