Former President Donald Trump held a slight lead over Vice President Kamala Harris in a poll that included Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the former independent presidential candidate who suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump last week.
Noble Predictive Insights conducted the polling between August 12 and August 16, which occurred directly before the Democratic National Convention (DNC) and before Kennedy endorsed Trump.
According to the survey, Trump held a 1-point lead against Harris, receiving the support of 44 percent of respondents compared to the Democrat’s 43 percent, while 5 percent said they supported Kennedy.
The poll also included Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party and independent presidential candidate Cornel West, who pollsters found each had 1 percent of the vote.
It remains unclear exactly how many of the 5 percent of Arizona voters who purportedly planned to vote for Kennedy will transfer their support to Trump, but Kennedy claimed when endorsing Trump that his internal data found 57 percent of his supporters would cast a ballot for the former president without him in the race.
Similarly, the Trump campaign has reportedly claimed its internal data shows 66 percent of Kennedy’s supporters will vote for the former president in the wake of the endorsement, while just 16 percent will transfer their support from Kennedy to Harris.
The same survey released head-to-head polling data, which could reflect a similar distribution of Kennedy’s supporters in a race without him on the ballot.
In a head-to-head contest, Noble Predictive Insights found Trump would beat Harris by 3 percent, with the Republican supported by 47 percent of respondents compared to 44 percent who chose Harris.
Kennedy began withdrawing from the ballot in 11 battleground states last week and has already successfully had his name removed from the ballot in Arizona. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes confirmed last week that the independent presidential candidate will not be on the ballot.
The independent presidential candidate said his decision to suspend his candidacy and endorse Trump came after a series of legal actions taken by Democrats to stymie his campaign in key states, which resulted in his name being tossed off the ballot in New York.
Kennedy offered his own insight into Trump’s Make America Great Again campaign slogan in a Sunday post to the social media platform X, where he said supporters of the former president seek to restore “an America that was beginning to confront its darker shadows, could acknowledge the injustice in its past and present, yet at the same time could celebrate its successes.”
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Kamala Harris” by Kamala Harris.
