Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Is Polling Surprisingly Well Among Latino Voters

Pollsters attribute the independent candidate’s strength to significant name recognition and to frustration with the top two contenders.

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When Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Donald J. Trump faced off in the 2020 presidential election, Alexis Figueroa, a hospital worker in Phoenix, would have voted for Mr. Biden, he said, because he seemed like the least controversial of the two candidates.

But with those men back on the ballot in November, Mr. Figueroa is considering a third option: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“He’s going after those who are new to voting, the younger generation not being heard,” Mr. Figueroa, now 20, said of Mr. Kennedy, adding that he did not want to vote for Mr. Biden because he did not believe that the president had fulfilled many of his promises.

In a race in which enthusiasm for the top two contenders is low, more Latino voters like Mr. Figueroa are leaning toward third-party candidates, recent surveys show. Mr. Kennedy, who is running a long-shot independent presidential bid, is polling surprisingly well among Hispanic voters in battleground states, pollsters and political observers said, though so far he is officially on the ballot only in California, Utah, Michigan, Oklahoma, Hawaii and Delaware.

Polls show Mr. Kennedy drawing support away from both the Trump and Biden campaigns, but when it comes to Latinos, who overwhelmingly vote Democratic, he may pose a bigger threat to Mr. Biden.

“It’s a trend we see over and over — in a forced choice between Trump and Biden, Biden does better than on a ballot where there are other options,” said David Byler, the chief of research at Noble Predictive Insights, a national polling firm that works in Arizona and Nevada. “For most of this election, his support has simply been softer than Trump’s.”

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