Breaking News: Biden and Trump tie at 37% as RFK Jr. costs Trump a narrow lead

It’s a tie: One year before the presidential election, Joe Biden and Donald Trump each command 37% of the vote in a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll − with independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. costing Trump what would have been a narrow lead.

Kennedy, scion of the nation’s most revered Democratic family, won 13% of the vote in a hypothetical match-up, drawing voters who by 2-1 said they would otherwise support the probable Republican nominee.

Progressive activist Cornel West, also planning an independent campaign, is at 4%. His supporters would break to Biden if he weren’t on the ballot.

The survey’s findings underscore the complicated arithmetic and the unsettled politics of the likely rematch of the 2020 nominees, especially with the addition of at least one significant independent candidacy and possibly more.

Carl Hickey, 85, a retired Methodist minister from Monkton, Maryland, is a Democrat who plans to vote for President Biden but would consider a third-party candidate if the right one emerged. “We’ve got to do something that’s different,” he said in a follow-up interview after being polled. “The division has to stop; we have to work together.”

Desiree Whitney, 64, a retiree from Boerne, Texas, who voted for Trump in 2020, would consider voting for Kennedy in 2024. “I am supportive of him because he doesn’t seem to be the Washington ilk,” she said. RFK Jr., who initially made his reputation as an environmental lawyer, has become an outspoken advocate of conspiracy theories on vaccinations and other issues.

One in four voters, 26%, said they would seriously consider supporting a bipartisan ticket of a Republican and a Democrat that a centrist group called No Labels may field. Another 23% said they might consider it, depending on who the nominees were. Biden voters were more likely than Trump voters − 28% compared with 18% − to say they would take a serious look.

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The poll of 1,000 registered voters, taken by landline and cell phone Tuesday through Friday, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.