Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban says he will not run for president after refusing to rule out a third-party run earlier in the year.
Cuban, appearing Thursday on the podcast “The Axe Files” with ex-Obama adviser David Axelrod, said that in May he had hired a pollster to assess his chances in a three-way race with President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden and ultimately decided the numbers were not in his favor.
“In a three-way between me, Biden and Trump, I dominated the independent vote — I got like 77 percent percent of it and was able to take some votes away from Donald and some votes away from Biden,” Cuban said.
“But in aggregate, I was only able to get up to 25 percent. From every which way, crosstab, you name it, I had it analyzed and scrutinized every which way, projected, and they could only see me getting up to 25 percent. That’s why I didn’t pursue it further,” he added.
Cuban also floated a run in 2016 before abandoning the idea and endorsing Hillary Clinton, but has suggested he was open to a 2020 run on numerous occasions.
The “Shark Tank” host denied he was motivated by concerns that his presence in the race would siphon votes from Biden and give Trump the edge.
“Not so much that. I just didn’t think I could win,” Cuban told Axelrod. “The competitive side of me thought, when people heard me speak, when people heard my positions, when people heard the fact that I understood what I was talking about and understood technology and none of the candidates understood technology that maybe I could do it.”
Cuban made the comments shortly after another potential third-party candidate, Rep. Justin Amash (L-Mich.), announced he would not seek the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination in 2020.