Bielat said in a phone interview last night that he was not concerned about the early numbers. ‘‘It’s consistent with everything we know about the race, which is that nobody knows who this guy is; they just know his last name,’’ he said of Kennedy.
Kyle Sullivan, a Kennedy spokesman, said in an e-mail that the poll was premature. He declined to comment when asked if Kennedy was any closer to officially declaring his candidacy.
‘‘If Joe runs, he is going to work hard to earn every vote,’’ Sullivan said. ‘‘He has been traveling across the district talking about the issues that are important to the people of the Fourth District, creating new jobs, providing better educational opportunities, and restoring common sense and fairness in Congress.’’
The poll, which surveyed 408 voters in the Fourth Congressional District and has a margin of error of plus or minus 6.4 percentage points, also found that nearly three-quarters of respondents had a positive view of the Kennedy family overall.
The numbers belie the fact that Bielat, a former program manager at the iRobot Corp. in Bedford who currently lives in Norfolk, emerged in 2010 as the toughest challenger to Frank’s incumbency in nearly two decades before ultimately losing the race by 11 percentage points.
Kennedy, who is also the son of former congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II, could benefit from his family’s name recognition in a head-to-head matchup with Bielat, the poll found.
Twenty-eight percent of respondents said his pedigree would make them more likely to vote for him, while 15 percent said it would make them less likely to support him, and 56 percent said it made no difference.
At the same time, however, 34 percent of respondents said the Kennedys have too much influence on state politics, while 49 percent said the family has ‘‘about the right amount of influence,’’ and 8 percent said they do not have enough, the poll found.
Bielat took aim at the Kennedy legacy last month when he announced his second campaign for the seat.
