Campaign

Biden leading RFK Jr. by 53 points in new survey

President Biden is seen during a ceremony on the South Lawn of the Whtie House in Washington, D.C., to honor the Super Bowl LVII champions' Kansas City Chiefs on Monday, June 5, 2023.

President Biden is comfortably leading his declared primary challengers for the 2024 race, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday.

The poll found that 70 percent of Democratic-leaning voters surveyed support Biden in a 2024 primary, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. drawing 17 percent and Marianne Williamson pulling in support from 8 percent of those surveyed.

The poll also found 42 percent of those surveyed said they view Biden favorably, compared to 54 percent who view him unfavorably.

Kennedy had a 31-percent favorability rating, while 26 percent viewed him unfavorably and 43 percent said they hadn’t heard enough about him.

The poll found 72 percent of those surveyed hadn’t heard enough about Williamson to form an opinion.

The Quinnipiac poll surveyed 1,929 adults from June 8-12 and has a margin of error of 2.2 percentage points.

Kennedy has polled in double digits in some recent surveys, feeding into speculation about whether Biden is vulnerable to a primary challenge.

But White House allies and Democratic strategists have dismissed Kennedy’s polling largely as a result of strong name identification, and they note that his anti-vaccine views, positions on the war in Ukraine and stances on mass shootings are all in opposition to widely supported beliefs among Democratic voters.

The Democratic National Committee has backed Biden’s reelection bid, meaning there will not be debates sanctioned by the party for the primary process.