Joey GarrisonUSA TODAY
CHICAGO − The abrupt exit of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his endorsem*nt of Donald Trump has shaken up the 2024 White House race with just 74 days until Election Day − but whether it's a boon for the Republican presidential nominee remains unclear.
Though polling suggests former President Trump could benefit from the suspended campaign of the independent Kennedy − a conspiracy theorist, environmental advocate and son of the late liberal icon Robert F. Kennedy − political analysts question whether it's a major gain.
"It has very little impact in the national polling," said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center. "The question is, what will the impact be in the swing states? And from what we've seen, it's probably going to be marginal."
Given the growing negative perceptions that voters have about Kennedy, his endorsem*nt poses a risk to Trump, who is no stranger to courting controversy.
In long, rambling remarks Friday announcing he is "suspending" his candidacy, Kennedy said he is throwing his support to Trump. He made clear his opposition of Vice President Kamala Harris and used a long windup to his speech to rail on the Democratic Party.
Kennedy said his name will remain on ballots in some states but he will "remove" his name from about 10 battlegrounds. Yet he still suggested a farfetched scenario in which he somehow emerges as a negotiated president if Trump and Harris tie in the Electoral College.
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For much of the election cycle, Democrats labeled Kennedy an "election spoiler" whose candidacy was meant to help Trump by peeling votes away from President Joe Biden. But after Harris took over as the party's 2024 nominee, polling started showing that Kennedy was doing the opposite: hurting Trump more than the Democrats.
Even before Biden's exit, a USA TODAY/Suffolk University national poll in June found Trump the second choice of 32% of Kennedy supporters and Biden the second choice of 18% of Kennedy supporters. Another 26% said they were unsure who they would back besides Kennedy, and the remaining respondents moved to other third-party candidates.
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The poll found 42% of Republican voters viewed Kennedy favorably, along with 36% of independent voters, compared with just 17% of Democratic voters.
More recently, a survey of seven battleground states by the Cook Political Report last week found Trump was the second choice of 45% of Kennedy voters in these crucial states, compared with 26% for Harris. Yet the poll found Kennedy with support from only 5% of likely voters across these states, down from 8% in May.
Kennedy, who winded down regular campaign events weeks ago, has led a campaign that has often bordered on the bizarre. There have been revelations that he placed the carcass of a dead baby bear cub in New York's Central Park a decade ago and that doctors found a dead worm in his brain. He faced new sexual assault allegations dating back to the 1990s and was blocked from the ballot in New York after a judge ruled he provided a false residency.
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Since announcing her candidacy, Harris has performed moderately better in polls that feature third-party candidates than head-to-head between only her and Trump. For example, a Marquette Law School poll of registered Wisconsin voters this month found Trump leading 50%-49% in a head-to-head matchup but Harris leading Trump 45%-43% with other candidates like Kennedy and liberal academic Cornel West added to the mix. Kennedy had support from 8% of registered Wisconsin voters.
Kennedy, however, is not popular among the majority of Americans, polling suggests. The Cook Political Report survey of swing states found that Kennedy is viewed unfavorably by 45% of likely voters nationally and favorably by 39%.
And his share of the electoral vote has been sliding in polls for months. Kennedy is polling at 4.5% nationally, according to the Real Clear Politics average of polls, down from 11% in early May. It follows a historic trend of third-party candidates polling better in the spring than closer to the election.
On the other hand, in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin that could be decided by only thousands of votes, any shift could be critical.
Paleologos said he expects the Trump and Harris campaigns will fine-tune their outreach efforts to identify the former Kennedy voters that each can pick up.
More likely to benefit Harris are the 18% of Kennedy voters who were independent women in the USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll in June and the 13% who were 29 years old or younger. More likely to help Trump are the 16% of Kennedy voters who received trade or vocational education and the 15% who were independent male voters, a group he performs better among than Harris.
"The smart campaign will have separate operations for each of those micro-targeting focuses," Paleologos said.
Harris' campaign chair, Jen O'Malley Dillon, during a panel talk this week in Chicago hosted by Politico, downplayed the effect Kennedy's exit will have on the race
"We are very confident the vice president's going to win, whether she's running against one candidate or multiple candidates," O'Malley Dillon said, pointing to Kennedy's polling slide after his peak last spring. "The more the American people have heard from him, the more we see that they don't like him that much and they think that what he's saying is more extreme."
But the Trump campaign touted the endorsem*nt as potentially critical in helping the Republican nominee win key swing states. Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio, in a memo Friday, said the number of votes likely to swing from Kennedy to Trump in certain states like Arizona could be greater than Biden's 2020 victories in those states.
"So, when you hear or see the Harris team and/or the Democrats try and spin otherwise, now that the data clearly paints a different picture," Fabrizio said. "This is good news for President Trump and his campaign – plain and simple."
In a statement, Democratic National Committee senior adviser Mary Beth Cahill said "good riddance."
“The more voters learned about RFK Jr. the less they liked him," she said. "Donald Trump isn’t earning an endorsem*nt that’s going to help build support, he’s inheriting the baggage of a failed fringe candidate."
Cahill is a longtime Democratic strategist who previously worked as chief of staff to the late-Sen. Ted Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat and uncle of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Reach Joey Garrison on X, formerly Twitter, @joeygarrison.
