By Stephanie Kelly and Jarrett Renshaw
PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – Some supporters of former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who ended his White House bid and endorsed Donald Trump last month, are now backing the Republican.
In a race that is expected to be won by narrow margins in battleground states like Pennsylvania and Michigan, Trump and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris are fighting over a thin slice of undecided voters.
That makes Kennedy’s endorsement potentially significant, as he left the race in late August with around 4% support.
Harris has surged in polls since becoming the Democratic Party candidate in late July and she has a lead in the most recent Reuters/Ipsos national poll, released on Tuesday.
However, some polls show Trump has in recent weeks won over more of Kennedy’s supporters than Harris.
Kennedy’s spokespeople and the Harris campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters interviewed 11 Kennedy supporters, five of them from battleground states, after he dropped out and joined Trump’s transition team.
Six of them said they will now vote for Trump and one is leaning toward voting for Trump. One said they will vote for Trump if Kennedy is not an option on their state ballot. One is deciding between voting for Trump or Kennedy, and one is deciding between voting for Trump or Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Only one of the 11 plans to vote for Harris.
Matthew McCloskey, a 26-year-old wellness adviser in Holland, Michigan, supported Stein in the 2016 election and wrote in Andrew Yang in 2020. He was backing Kennedy this year and now will vote for Trump.
“I’ve been shoved along with many anti-war, anti-corruption Democrats right out of my own party,” McCloskey said, pointing to broad conflicts the U.S. is engaged in.
He said Trump’s addition of Kennedy to his transition team and potentially to a new administration shows that Trump is “serious about actually challenging this corporate capture of our government agencies.”
While Reuters’ survey was not statistically significant, broader polling also shows that Trump may have the advantage in courting Kennedy supporters in states where the race is tightest.
In Michigan, Trump received a 2%-3% bump in support from Kennedy’s endorsement, helping him lead Harris by one percentage point in the state, according to research from EPIC-MRA, a Michigan-based polling firm from polls before Trump and Harris’ debate Sept. 10.
That 2%-3% translates to as many as 165,000 Michigan voters, said Bernie Porn, EPIC-MRA’s president. President Joe Biden won Michigan by about 154,000 votes in 2020.
In a Marquette Law School Poll in Wisconsin released Sept. 11, two-thirds of would-be Kennedy voters in the state backed Trump in a two-person race against Harris.
“He certainly has some of the same anti-establishment appeal that Trump has,” said Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll. “That’s the obvious match between them on that.”
In the 2020 election, Biden won Wisconsin by about 21,000 votes. Third-party voters made up under 2% of the state’s total vote in 2020, or around 49,000 votes.
Democrats say they believe that Kennedy’s endorsement of Trump will prove negligible by Election Day, as Kennedy’s support was relatively low before dropping out.
UPSET WITH DEMOCRATS
Reuters found the Kennedy supporters it interviewed through a mix of in-person and virtual political rally events and via social media platforms. The interviews took place over the last several weeks.
Many were upset with the Democratic Party for what they saw as undemocratic tactics to keep Kennedy from getting on the ballot in some states. Democrats challenged Kennedy in states including Georgia, Nevada, Texas and New York.
“The Democratic Party, which I have supported at times, has shown itself to be a party that will do anything to remain in power,” said Kevin Nally, a 68-year-old retired systems administrator in Rochester, New York, who had supported Kennedy.
Nally said he voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election and Biden in the 2020 election, but he believes the Democratic Party influenced social media companies and major media outlets to censor Kennedy and limit his exposure while misrepresenting him as a “fringe candidate.”
Kennedy was interviewed in person and his public statements were carried live by major media including Reuters, the New York Times, television networks and others. He has nearly 3 million followers on Instagram and 2.2 million on TikTok.
Nally said he will vote for Trump if Kennedy is not on the ballot in New York state.
Sanjay Paul, a 48-year-old online instructor in Midlothian, Virginia, was the one Kennedy supporter that Reuters spoke to for this story who now plans to vote for Harris. He did not vote for any candidate in the 2016 or 2020 elections.
“Kamala Harris can open up the conversation with issues that might have been put on the back burner, like around whether it’s abortion or equal pay or what the nuanced views are from the female perspective,” said Paul, though he added he sees positive qualities in all of the candidates.
In exchange for endorsing Trump, Kennedy, a 70-year-old environmental activist who has spread misinformation on vaccines, is hoping for a job in a potential Trump administration.
The son and nephew of two titans of Democratic politics who were assassinated during the 1960s, he entered the race as a Democrat but switched to become an independent candidate when it was clear he would not win the party’s nomination.
The Trump campaign said in response to this story that Trump is “building the largest, most diverse political movement in history.”
(Reporting by Stephanie Kelly and Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Heather Timmons)
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