In an election year of dramatic twists and turns, the Democratic Party suffered a potentially serious one when independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on August 23 that he would suspend his campaign and “throw my support” to former president and 2024 Republican nominee Donald Trump.
The news came the day after Vice President Kamala Harris, who has recently polled better against Trump than Joe Biden, accepted the Democratic nomination for president amid massive fanfare from the legacy media. Kennedy and many of his supporters have expressed resentment that Harris became the Democratic nominee without a voter-based selection contest. He has also accused the Democrats of rigging their 2024 primary process against challengers and fiercely criticized them for their attempts to remove him and other third-party candidates from state ballots and minimize media coverage of his campaign.
Kennedy said that he will remain on the ballot in states that he expects will vote decisively red or blue, where his presence will make little practical difference, but he added that he will seek to remove his name from balloting in “about ten battleground states” where he believes his continuing presence could help Harris win close contests against Trump.
Kennedy did not list the ten states, and he now faces challenges from the Harris campaign and from Democratic election authorities who insist he remain on the ballot, but his purpose in helping Trump to defeat Harris is clear. Earlier on the day of the announcement of his withdrawal, Kennedy’s campaign filed papers to withdraw his name from the ballot in Arizona—a key swing state—where he gave the speech announcing his campaign’s suspension and his endorsement of Trump. Later that day, Trump, who hailed RFK Jr. as “phenomenal” and “brilliant” amid promises to release all remaining classified materials pertaining to the assassination of the former candidate’s uncle, John F. Kennedy, held a prescheduled election rally in Arizona that included RFK Jr. on stage amid cheers and fireworks.
Kennedy has claimed to agree with Trump more than Harris on what he called “existential” issues—free speech, war policy, and public-health decision making—and argues that this convergence makes the pair natural allies against the Democrats. But what do his supporters think, and how will his endorsement change the race?
According to the last polling before the withdrawal, Kennedy’s support had fallen into the single digits, and it had been declining since Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee in July. He stood at just 5 percent at RealClear Politics and 4.6 percent at FiveThirtyEight, organizations that publish rolling averages of national polls.
Those figures represent a considerable drop from the 15 percent and occasionally higher numbers Kennedy enjoyed earlier this year. In an electorate of more than 161 million eligible voters, even the reduced percentages supporting Kennedy still amount to 7 million to 8 million ballots, which could make a difference in November, given the thin margins. In a RealClear Politics polling average that included Kennedy, Jill Stein, and Cornel West released August 23, Trump trailed Harris in the national popular vote by two points, with Harris leading 46.4 percent to 44.4 percent. In a hypothetical one-on-one contest, however, Harris’s lead shrank to 1.5 points—48.4 percent to 46.9 percent.
Swing states are even closer, showing dead heats between the two major candidates and effectively negating the expected post-Democratic National Convention bounce that was expected to favor Harris. Even a slight shift in one direction among Kennedy’s supporters could be decisive in winning those states’ crucial electoral votes.
As of the time of his withdrawal, most Kennedy supporters appeared to favor Trump by a significant margin, likely because left-leaning RFK Jr. types realized that Harris had a better chance than Biden to win in November and shifted their support already. A YouGov poll released three days before Kennedy’s withdrawal found that registered Republicans backing him outnumbered his Democratic supporters by three to one. Polling data released by Outward Intelligence the day before he dropped out found that Kennedy voters would break for Trump nationally by 59 percent versus 41 percent for Harris in the event of Kennedy’s withdrawal. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report found that Trump would take 46 percent of Kennedy’s supporters, with only 26 percent going to Harris.
A Trump campaign internal poll posted on X showed Kennedy’s voters preferring Trump over Harris by double-digit margins in all swing states except Michigan, where the breakdown is only slightly in Trump’s favor. According to senior Trump adviser Chris LaCivita, “in every single state RFK Jr.’s vote breaks for President Trump.” Trump’s pollster Tony Fabrizio called the results “good news for President Trump and his campaign—plain and simple.” The figures included a 66–16 split in Trump’s favor in Nevada, 58–22 in North Carolina, 55–25 in Wisconsin, and 53–28 in Arizona. Pennsylvania and Georgia register smaller but still significant Trump leads among RFK Jr. voters, by 13 and 14 points, respectively, while in Michigan the margin is a narrow 45–43 percent preference for Trump. In most cases, Trump’s predicted leads among third-party stalwarts dwarf the margins by which Biden won in the relevant states in 2020 and could easily exceed any advantage enjoyed Harris, whose polling numbers are lower than Biden’s were at the same time four years ago. RealClear Politics estimates that, with Kennedy’s withdrawal, Trump will take the lead in all swing states except Michigan and Wisconsin, where Harris could still eke out a minor advantage.
The polls above were taken before Kennedy’s announcement became a reality and thus don’t account for his Trump endorsement or his angry denunciation of the Democratic Party. These factors could encourage even more Kennedy supporters to back the Republican nominee. Less than two weeks later, though Harris maintains a slight national lead in most polls, Trump’s position in almost all swing states—which will be decisive in the electoral college—has improved since Kennedy’s withdrawal. According to the latest polling released by Insider Advantage and the Trafalgar Group, Trump leads in six of the seven swing states and is tied in the remaining one. Recall that Biden’s 2020 Electoral College victory was decided by only about 43,000 votes across three states, with that year’s Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgenson receiving nearly 1.9 million votes—or 1.2 percent of the total—with many of them siphoned away from Trump. In 2000, George W. Bush beat Al Gore by just 537 votes in Florida, thus securing the electoral vote. In 2024, the decision could well be made by a Kennedy.
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