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For so-called "longshot" candidates, Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott among Republicans and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. among Democrats sure are popular in recent polling for the 2024 presidential nominations.
Their likeability with voters, however, has so far failed to translate to tangible support for their campaigns.
When he entered the race this year, Kennedy was seen as a legitimate threat to siphon support from President Joe Biden, who wasn't receiving full support for reelection within his own party.
Going off recent Harvard/Harris polling released last week, for example, Kennedy's net favorability rating of +21 (meaning his favorable numbers are 21 percentage points higher than his unfavorable numbers) was 35 points higher than Biden's as the president remained dogged by an anemic -53 favorability rating among the more than 2,000 registered voters polled.
But Kennedy has struggled to gain any momentum against a president whose job approval has regularly sagged well below lows seen by Trump, Barack Obama or George W. Bush in polls conducted during their presidencies. While 16 percent of Democratic voters in last week's poll said they would support Kennedy over Biden, the president still enjoys the backing of 62 percent of Democratic voters.
And it's not just against Biden. In a hypothetical matchup against Vice President Kamala Harris, Kennedy would get only about 22 percent of the vote.
Newsweek reached out to Kennedy's campaign via email for comment. However, the answer for Kennedy's inability to break through is, seemingly, simple: Biden, despite his unpopularity with Republicans and independents, is still very popular within his own party.
Though some two-thirds of voters said they didn't want Biden to run for a second term (including 38 percent of Democrats) in a poll of 922 registered voters by The Messenger/Harris released Tuesday, Biden still enjoys a 78 percent approval rating among members of his own party while Kennedy, for the most part, has enjoyed most of his public-facing support from conservative groups and donors eager for a challenger to Biden.
A similar story is playing out on the Republican side as more popular candidates like Scott and Ramaswamy have so far failed to gain meaningful traction against the front-runner, former President Donald Trump. Though both men maintain double-digit net favorability ratings, Trump—the current front-runner in the Republican field—has an unfavorable rating only four points better than Biden's, yet still boasts the support of more than half of Republican primary voters in most polls.
And while his opponents are popular, they have so far failed to convince voters they're worthy of replacing Trump at the top of the ticket ahead of next year's primaries. Where Scott, whose campaign has invested heavily in boosting his prospects in swing states like Iowa, has a net favorability rating of 10, a large swath of the population has either not heard of him or has no opinion of him, mirroring his current 2 percent share of the GOP primary vote in Harvard's polling.
Ramaswamy, the most "likable" Republican in the field, maintains a healthy net favorable rating of 16 with GOP voters. But while Ramaswamy's numbers in Harvard/Harris polling have actually increased 8 percentage points since the last poll in June (and Trump's have decreased by 7), the former president still enjoys the support of more than half of Republican voters nationally.
Even with Trump out of the picture, Ramaswamy, in a hypothetical primary election without Trump on the ballot, is still projected to finish 10 percentage points behind Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in the 13-candidate field.
Trump's lead could be seen as history repeating itself.
In 2012, GOP candidate Mitt Romney led most polls in early-voting states for his party's nomination for president despite approval ratings in the low 30s among all voters nationally, according to polling by the Pew Research Center at the time. In one January 2012 poll by the organization, some 47 percent of voters said they had an unfavorable opinion of Romney, almost the same as Trump's position today.
Romney, the party's nominee, would ultimately go on to lose the popular vote to Obama by 4 percentage points in that November's general election.
About the writer
Nick Reynolds is a senior politics reporter at Newsweek. A native of Central New York, he previously worked as a ... Read more