New Yahoo News/YouGov poll: RFK Jr. hasn't upended the 2024 election by dropping out and endorsing Trump

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision last Friday to suspend his independent presidential campaign and throw his support behind former President Donald Trump doesn’t appear to have helped Trump very much, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll.

The survey of 1,788 U.S. adults, which was conducted from Aug. 22 to 26, shows Vice President Kamala Harris (46%) narrowly leading Trump (45%) among registered voters in a matchup that includes remaining third-party candidates such as independent Cornel West (1%), Green Party nominee Jill Stein (1%) and libertarian Chase Oliver (1%).

These new results represent a shift in Harris’s favor since she announced her candidacy on July 21. The previous Yahoo News/YouGov poll, which was conducted mostly before President Biden withdrew from the race and endorsed Harris, found Trump (43%) edging Harris (41%) when third-party candidates were factored in.

Back then, Kennedy was siphoning off 5% of the vote. Now that he has left the race, both Harris (+5 points) and Trump (+2 points) are polling a few percentage points higher than before — suggesting that each candidate has picked up at least some of RFK Jr.’s former supporters.

It’s impossible, however, to say how much of those gains over the last month have come from Kennedy’s exit as opposed to other recent developments, such as the announcement of running mates, the nominating conventions and shifting vibes.

What is clear is that Harris’s overall standing has improved more in recent weeks than Trump’s.

Kennedy voters for Harris?

The new Yahoo News/YouGov poll tells a plausible story about the so-called Kennedy effect.

In July, when Kennedy was still running, Yahoo News and YouGov also asked registered voters how they would vote if Harris and Trump were the only candidates they could choose from. Harris’s support in this two-way scenario rose to 46%, 5 points higher than had been on the ballot that included Kennedy; Trump’s support also rose to 46%, a 3-point increase.

In other words, if you hypothetically eliminated Kennedy from the ballot, Harris got a bigger bump than Trump. The race shifted from a 43%-41% Trump lead to a 46%-46% tie.

This makes sense. On prior Yahoo News/YouGov surveys conducted from November 2023 to July 2024 — when Biden was on the ballot — an equal number of Kennedy voters identified as Democrats and Republicans. But now that Harris has taken Biden’s place, roughly twice as many remaining, would-be Kennedy voters identify as Republicans than as Democrats.

Why? Because many of Kennedy’s previous supporters were Democratic-leaning voters disinclined to vote for Biden. Once Harris replaced the president, some of these Democratic leaners flipped to Harris, helping to boost her overall support.

As a result, the remaining pool of self-identified Kennedy voters — the ones who were still backing RFK Jr. right up until he suspended his bid last week — became more Republican-leaning than it had been with Biden on the ballot.

Trump’s ‘Kennedy bump’ isn’t big enough to close the gap

Before mentioning Kennedy’s recent decision to withdraw and endorse Trump, the latest Yahoo News/YouGov survey asked respondents whether they had a favorable or unfavorable view of Kennedy. Among Democrats, unfavorable views of Kennedy have risen 23 points (to 66%) since October 2023; among Republicans, favorable views of Kennedy are up 13 points (to 60%) over the same period. Despite the Kennedy family’s Democratic lineage, Republicans now like RFK Jr. a lot more than Democrats do.

So what does this mean for November? Toward the end of the new Yahoo News/YouGov questionnaire, respondents were asked a hypothetical question: How would you vote if RFK Jr. were still a candidate? There, Kennedy gets 6% of the vote. Trump gets 42%. And Harris gets 44%.

These numbers suggest that the overall effect of Kennedy’s exit has been marginal. Recall that Harris gets 46% of the vote to Trump’s 45% without Kennedy on the ballot — a one-point lead. Hypothetically put Kennedy back on the ballot, and Harris’s lead grows to two points.

So in the end, Trump might be trailing by slightly less than he would have been in a world where Kennedy kept running. But Trump is still trailing. Whatever bump Harris has received since launching her bid — a bump that likely includes some former RFK Jr. voters — is bigger than whatever bump Trump has received since Kennedy dropped out.

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The Yahoo News survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,788 U.S. adults interviewed online from Aug. 22 to 26, 2024. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, education, 2020 election turnout and presidential vote, baseline party identification and current voter registration status. Demographic weighting targets come from the 2019 American Community Survey. Baseline party identification is the respondent’s most recent answer given prior to Nov. 1, 2022, and is weighted to the estimated distribution at that time (33% Democratic, 27% Republican). Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all U.S. adults. The margin of error is approximately 2.7%.