I wrote back in September of last year about how conservatives were boosting Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign to become the Democratic Party’s 2024 presidential nominee. Fox News covered his campaign heavily in the summer months of 2023. And polling consistently showed that he was much more popular among Republicans than Democrats.
Then RFK Jr. dropped his bid for the Democratic nomination
He basically disappeared from Fox News’ airways for the remainder of 2023. RFK Jr. then drew Donald Trump’s ire in April 2024 when it increasingly appeared that Kennedy’s third-party candidacy could siphon votes away from the ex-president.
In late April, Trump posted on Truth Social:
RFK Jr. is a Democrat ‘Plant,’ a Radical Left Liberal who’s been put in place in order to help Crooked Joe Biden, the Worst President in the History of the United States, get Re-Elected. A Vote for Junior’ would essentially be a WASTED PROTEST VOTE, that could swing either way, but would only swing against the Democrats if Republicans knew the true story about him.
That condemnation quickly eroded RFK’s Jr. ‘s popularity among Republicans. The graph below shows that his net GOP favorability rating (favorable minus unfavorable) plummeted from +24 in Quinnipiac University’s April poll (conducted before Trump’s criticism) down to +1 in May and -11 in June. The more sporadic YouGov/Economist polling on RFK Jr. produced the same pattern. His net rating among Republicans in those surveys fell from +21 in early April down to -4 in June.
But you can see that RFK Jr.’s popularity among Republicans immediately rebounded to new heights after he formally announced his support for Trump’s presidential campaign on Aug. 23. His GOP rating surged to +47 this week in polls conducted by both Quinnipiac University and YouGov/Economist.
It’s certainly not surprising, then, that RFK Jr. endorsed Trump. His campaign message had always resonated more with Republicans than Democrats, but he risked alienating that base of support by drawing votes away from the GOP in November. Joining forces with Trump, instead, solidifies Kennedy’s standing as a hero in Republican Party politics.
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