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Is Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg slowly positioning himself for a presidential run?

His recent actions are driving speculation that he is. Back in December, he made it public that he was no longer an atheist and that be now believes religion is “very important,” which is noteworthy given that atheists are the demographic that sees the most negative political bias.

This year he’s been touring the country, doing everything from attending a service at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. — which was targeted by white supremacist murderer, Dylann Roof — to sitting down with recovering opiod addicts at a rehabilitation center in Ohio, and visiting a family cattle farm in Wisconsin.

Texts released last year as part of a class action suit, showed that Zuckerberg had at least discussed the possibility of a run for office with funders such as venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, and it looks like getting to personally know a sliver of the two billion people who use Facebook is helping him advance that goal.

While Zuckerberg denies he’s going to run for President, his actions continue to suggest otherwise, as The Hill reports:

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hired Hillary Clinton’s former pollster as the tech mogul denies he’s running for president.

Joel Benenson, the chief strategist in Clinton’s 2016 campaign, is conducting research for Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan’s nonprofit, the Zuckerberg-Chan initiative, Politico reported Wednesday.

While Benenson’s work, done through his company Benenson Strategy Group, will focus on the couple’s philanthropy, it gives Zuckerberg access to a top pollster, as rumors emerge of a potential presidential run.

Zuckerberg has been touring the country as part of “A Year of Travel,” which included a stop in Iowa this June — a must-go destination for anyone floating a presidential bid.

The “Year of Travel” has been compared to a presidential listening tour and fueled speculation he could run for president.

He has denied that he is running for president multiple times, but rumors of a run have persisted as the Facebook founder continues his tour and weighs in on political issues like healthcare.

“Some of you have asked if this challenge means I’m running for public office. I’m not,” he wrote in a Facebook post earlier this year.

“I’m doing it to get a broader perspective to make sure we’re best serving our community of almost 2 billion people at Facebook and doing the best work to promote equal opportunity at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.”

Given Zuck’s denials thus far, if he is going to run, that’s something we won’t know until he actually does it. Regardless, this latest move can’t help but fuel the speculation that we’ll be seeing him at the Democratic primary in 2020.

[Note: This post was written by Matt Palumbo. He is a co-author of the new book A Paradoxical Alliance: Islam and the Left, and can be found on Twitter @MattPalumbo12]