RFK Jr. Supporters Say They Will Vote for Trump as Poll Show Harris Suffers

A number of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. supporters recently said on social media they will vote for Donald Trump if the independent presidential candidate drops out of the 2024 election and endorses the Republican nominee as a new poll found that if Kennedy Jr. leaves the race more of his supporters would lean towards backing the former president than Vice President Kamala Harris.
It follows unconfirmed reports that Kennedy Jr. will withdraw from the White House race and offer Trump his endorsement later today. Kennedy Jr. is due to deliver an “address to the nation” at 2 p.m. ET from Phoenix, Arizona, though when contacted by Newsweek his team said they had “no further details to share” about the event.
Kennedy Jr., meanwhile, has already submitted letters to withdraw from the presidential ballot in Arizona, according to the Associated Press. Trump is also due to hold a rally in Glendale, a suburb of Pheonix, later this evening.
Speculation that Kennedy Jr. could drop out of the race surged after Nicole Shanahan, his running mate, suggested the pair could “walk away right now and join forces with Donald Trump” in a podcast interview released on Tuesday. In response, Trump praised Kennedy Jr. during a CNN interview, calling him a “brilliant guy,” and said he would be “open” to offering him a job in a second Trump administration.
A number of self-described Kennedy Jr. supporters on X, formerly Twitter, said they are either open to switching their votes to Trump should the environmental campaigner and vaccine sceptic leave the contest, or had already decided to do so.
On Wednesday, in response to Austin Petersen, who stood in the Libertarian Party’s 2016 presidential primary, asking whether Kennedy Jr.’s supporters would “follow him to support Trump if RFK drops out,” user @just_a_hog_fan wrote: “Yes. I was dead set on voting for RFK Jr. I will now be voting for Trump because there is no way on God’s green earth that I’ll ever vote for Harris. I’m not a MAGA but I am now a Trump voter and I honestly don’t care what anyone has to say about it.”
X user @KnoxEndemic posted: “As an RFK Jr voter I am sticking with him until the bitter end. Unless he endorses Trump in which case I will vote for Trump. It’s that simple folks.”
User @jrs_1202 commented: “As a lifelong Democrat and ‘never-Trumper’, I would rather vote for Trump than Harris given everything I’ve seen this election cycle. I’m disgusted with everything the Democratic party has become. Thankfully I will have Kennedy on my ballot this November.”
Rick Manelius, an X user and CEO of a company supporting non-fungible tokens (NFTs), posted: “My kids made me a single issue voter for their welfare. And in this election, that means it’s RFK + straight republican ticket. Weird as I used to go libertarian president + straight dem ticket. Crazy how much the parties inverted since ~2016. Hoping sanity returns in 2028.”
Meanwhile, a survey of 1,867 likely U.S. voters conducted by Outward Intelligence between August 18 and 22 and published on Thursday found that if Kennedy Jr. does drop out of the race, 59 percent of his voters would lean towards backing Trump against 41 percent for Harris. Overall, the poll gave Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, a six-point lead over Trump, with 50 percent of the vote against 44 percent, and had a margin of error of 2.3 percent.
Separately, an analysis of recent polling by election website RacetotheWH found that the exclusion of third-party candidates, of whom Kennedy Jr. is by far the highest polling, would flip North Carolina and Nevada from being a Harris win to one for Trump.
Newsweek has reached out to Trump’s and Harris’ campaigns via email for comment.