Sabato dismisses Trump boost from RFK Jr. endorsement

Political scientist Larry Sabato dismissed a potential boost for former President Trump after independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. endorsed him last week.

Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics and editor-in-chief for election forecaster Sabato’s Crystal Ball, suggested Friday that not all of Kennedy’s supporters will vote for Trump. Kennedy announced Friday he would suspend his campaign and endorse the former president.

Sabato noted in an appearance on MSNBC that Kennedy has been losing traction since Vice President Harris launched her bid for the White House last month. 

“He has been dropping like a rock ever since Kamala Harris got in,” Sabato said of Kennedy.

“When he started, he was in the upper teens. In some polls, he was in the low 20s, and now at best, he’s at 5 or 6 percent in some of the states, and those polls are outdated,” he continued. “You know, we’ve had a Democratic Convention. One network poll just a few days ago had him at 2 percent.”

Harris has been gaining momentum across national and swing state polls as she closes the gap with former President Trump. Sabato said it was not guaranteed that Kennedy’s supporters would move to Trump and that some voters could vote for someone other than Trump or Harris.

“For people who think that, because he’s endorsing Trump, he can just move that 2 percent into Trump’s column,” Sabato said. “They don’t know much about politics. It doesn’t work that way. It’s not going to work that way.” 

Sabato also suggested that RFK Jr. failed to “cash in” on the Kennedy name.

His comments also come after the Trump campaign released a memo from its pollster, Tony Fabrizio, that suggested Trump would gain the majority of Kennedy’s supporters in a head-to-head match-up with Harris.

In a three-way race with Kennedy, Trump and Harris, the vice president has a 5.6 percentage point lead over Trump, according to The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s national polling average. Kennedy has about 2.8 percent of support, according to the average.