Robert Kennedy Jr. is expected to end his presidential campaign, possibly on Friday in Arizona, while considering whether to endorse Donald Trump.
“I will not confirm or deny that,” he said. “We are not talking about any of that.”
Kennedy’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, may have spilled the beans on a podcast earlier this week.
While the single-digit support Kennedy has is useless to his own campaign, the question remains how useful his endorsement of another candidate would translate to votes for that candidate.
When Biden dropped out, many of Kennedy’s voters shifted to Harris. They may have been voters who could take the campaign more seriously with Harris, or they were “double-haters,” who disliked Trump and Biden.
From Pew Research, Kennedy’s support was cut in half by the entrance of Harris. Of those who supported Kennedy in July, 4 in 10 shifted to Harris (compared with 2 in 10 who switched to Trump).
This might suggest that whatever Kennedy has left in support would align with Trump.
A newer poll out over the weekend from the Washington Post, working with ABC News and Ipsos shows what the head-to-head contest might be like.
Harris has a three-point edge over Trump among registered voters when Kennedy is included — and a four-point edge when it’s just her against Trump. Our poll included a small number of Kennedy supporters (again, because he doesn’t have that much support) but they were more likely to view Harris favorably (29 percent) than Trump (15 percent). They were also more likely to view Trump strongly unfavorably; 41 percent did.
With those strongly unfavorable numbers for Trump, many of those leftover Kennedy voters may end up staying home.
There is also the chatter about Cheryl Hines’ opinion of Trump, and her husband’s endorsement of Trump looking precarious.
Hanna Trudo is a Hill Reporter with an unnamed source.
