Where Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. injects uncertainty in Texas

The independent presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has had operatives in both the Trump and Biden camps worried at various times about Kennedy’s potential for siphoning votes from their candidates. National and state-level polling has generally demonstrated that as Kennedy’s candidacy attracts more public attention (certainly relative to other non-major party aspirants to the presidency), he tends to be viewed more favorably by Republicans than by Democrats – which as of the April 2024 University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll seems to be the case in Texas, too.

Yet a closer look below the party identification crosstabs suggests that the odd goulash of his pre-existing public identity, political ideology, policy positions, and the inherited family brand associated with Kennedy’s campaign has some appeal to a heterogeneous set of Texans who, at this stage of the campaign, seem favorably inclined toward him. While intending to elect him to the most important political office in the country does not necessarily follow from having a favorable view of him – 34% of Texas voters reported a favorable view of him, while only 8% preferred him in a multicandidate trial ballot in April – he clearly holds some appeal within some groups that have gotten a lot of attention for their shifting preferences as the 2024 presidential campaign unfolds.

Views of Kennedy have also shifted as his candidacy has received more attention, and should be expected to continue doing so as he receives more public attention. But so far, the overall pattern suggests that his self-branding as an iconoclastic outsider whose positions are an amalgam of left- and right-wing populism is having at least some resonance with groups that have been discussed widely as having weak, or non-existent, attachments to the two major candidates, including young voters, moderates, and even some conservatives. But in Texas, he clearly has greater appeal among conservatives and Republicans than among progressives and Democrats.

Party identification and views of Kennedy

While Kennedy drew slightly more from Democrats (8%) than from Republicans (6%) in the April UT/TxPP Poll (a difference that is statistically akin to a tie given that we are looking at subgroup estimates with large margins of error), Kennedy’s favorability ratings reveal that he is viewed more favorably among Republicans than Democrats by a large margin: 38% of Republicans viewed him favorably and 26% viewed him unfavorably, while 29% of Democrats viewed favorably and half, 50%, viewed him unfavorably. The intensity of Democrats’ unfavorable views – 41% viewed him very unfavorably – suggest an emerging ceiling of support among Democratic voters that is not evident (at this point) among Republicans (among whom only 7% view him very unfavorably).

Variance over the three surveys in which the TxPP poll asked about views of Kennedy suggest that partisans’ assessment of him have not gelled into a settled pattern. However, both Republican and Democratic voters appear to be moving in a negative direction, with the net favorability among Republicans (the only group with net positive views of Kennedy) declining from +24 in August of 2023, to +18 in December, to +12 in April of this year.

Most favorable groups

With the caveat that subgroup samples in the UT/TxPP poll have larger margins of error than the overall sample of self-declared registered voters, we can look to group crosstabs from the April poll to see where Kennedy’s favorability ratings are strongest.

His strongest net favorability ratings (by far) are among voters under 30: 52% view him favorably, while only 13% view him unfavorably, for a net +38 rating. His standing has only improved since last year among younger voters, when Kennedy received net favorability ratings of +17 and +23 in August and December, respectively.

At the same time, and with the small sample size caveat still in mind, Republican identifying voters under 30 hold more positive views of Kennedy (63% favorable; 9% unfavorable) than do Democratic leaning voters under 30 (54% favorable; 15% unfavorable).

Other groups among whom Kennedy polls strongest include:

• Biblical literalists, among whom 47% hold a favorable view and 20% hold an unfavorable view (net +27) (These are respondents who agree what the Bible is “the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word”); 
• voters who identify themselves ideologically as “leaning conservative” as opposed to “very” or “extremely conservative”, among whom 45% hold a favorable view and 26% hold an unfavorable view (net +19); and 
• voters who identify themselves as “moderate” on the same scale, among whom 38% hold a favorable view and 24% hold an unfavorable view (net +14).

Least favorable groups

The voting groups with the least favorable views of Kennedy are led by liberal voters, allowing for the same caveats already repeatedly described about small subgroup samples. Overall, 60% of liberals hold an unfavorable view of Kennedy, including half who hold very unfavorable views. Only 21% say that they hold a favorable view (net -39). Among those voters who identify as “extremely liberal”, the share holding unfavorable views increases to 67% (61% very unfavorable), with only 16% holding a favorable view (net -51).

The other groups registering the most negative opinions of Kennedy include college educated Democrats (27% favorable; 55% unfavorable; net -28) and voters over the age of 65 (26% favorable; 52% unfavorable; net -26) — two groups known for their high rates of participation.

Assessing RFK, Jr. Tropes in Texas

While the data are limited by his relatively recent inclusion in Texas polling, what exists suggests that predictions of Kennedy’s impact on the presidential race in Texas are thus far not clearly supported by the data. What we do know about him (like much in the race) should also be qualified by the combination of his relative newness to Texas voters (despite his famous surname) and, even more importantly, by the amount of time remaining before most voters begin paying serious attention to the campaigns, and giving serious thoughts to their votes. 

Early concerns that Kennedy may pose a problem for Democrats, by virtue of either his name or his tentative gestures toward running for the Democratic nomination, seems to be trending more toward cutting into Trump’s vote than into Biden’s — though the extent of this is likely small, at least based on current data. RFK Jr. has the potential to draw votes from both columns, but the preponderance of positive views of Kennedy among conservatives suggests that his polyglot populism resonates more with the right side of the spectrum than the left side. At his current levels of support, this pattern looks unlikely to pose a fatal threat to Trump’s baseline advantage in Texas, even if one can plausibly argue that it might subtract incrementally from his support.

While Kennedy’s support among young voters has understandably attracted a lot of attention, that support is not especially intense, and not distributed evenly by either partisanship or ideology. In terms of assessing his impact on the two major party candidates, young voters are likely to be less attentive at this stage of the campaign, less attached to either party through years of voting, and hold views more likely to be subject to change as they pay more attention to the presidential race and coverage of it. All of these factors make predictions about his impact among young voters in November based on polling to date are premature. For all the heartburn Kennedy seems to be causing the major campaigns at the national level, there are few signs so far that he stands to have a major impact in Texas, where the race is not as close as in battleground states where the polling differences between the candidates is just a point or two – though, like many other factors in the Trump-Biden race, Kennedy’s impact could change as a result of unforeseen events in either, or both, of the major candidates’ candidacies.