There are a lot of factors that bode well for the GOP in 2024, regardless of who the nominee might be. The economy is an incredibly important issue that hurts Joe Biden significantly, especially since he put all his chips on pushing “Bidenomics” at a time when Americans are spending a lot more money at the gas station and the supermarket. Meanwhile, various polls have shown that voters trust Republicans more to handle the issues voters care about the most in 2024.
Despite all these factors working against Biden, the race is still close. Polls show that a rematch between Trump and Biden is neck and neck. Why is that happening? Well, a new poll from Fox News sheds some light on this.
According to the poll, despite all the factors working to Trump’s benefit, Democrats would be unified against him in the general election.
“The 2024 general election matchups remain tight. Despite a job approval rating stuck at 41%, Biden’s support in hypothetical head-to-heads is between 45-49% against each Republican tested,” explains Dana Blanton at Fox News Digital. “He is preferred over Trump by just 1 point, while DeSantis has a 2-point edge over Biden and Haley tops him by 4 points. This marks the first time in Fox News polling this year that Trump has fared worse against Biden than his rivals for the Republican nomination.”
Independent voters favor each Republican over Biden. But what really makes this poll interesting is that it includes three-way matchups with both third-party candidates, Cornel West and Robert F. Kennedy.
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Despite having previously run as a Democrat, Kennedy actually takes roughly the same number of votes from both parties, garnering 13% of Democrats and 11% of Republicans. In a three-way match-up between Kennedy, Biden, and Trump, Biden and Trump are equal at 41%, and Kennedy gets 16%. West pulls more support from Biden than from Trump.
“Independents are more likely to go for Kennedy (41%) than West (28%). That is at the expense of Trump, who performs 9 points better among independents against West than Kennedy,” explained Blanton.
Many on the right believed that Kennedy’s entrance into the race would hurt Biden more, but Democrats are so unified against Trump that Kennedy is pulling almost equally from both candidates, and Trump’s current advantage with independent voters gets erased by Kennedy.
However, a poll from Echelon Insights suggests that Kennedy would actually help Trump. But internal polling from the Trump campaign found that Kennedy’s independent candidacy appears to help Biden, so the Trump campaign is now going to attack Kennedy, pointing out his radical left-wing record. Will that be enough? It’s hard to say. Despite his history of radical leftist views, Kennedy has been getting a lot of love recently from conservatives over his positions on a few select issues. For some reason, Kennedy will be a speaker at a CPAC event in Las Vegas that is taking place next week.
It seems that conservatives propped up Kennedy thinking he’d be a spoiler for Biden, but instead made him an attractive candidate to independent voters.
