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While Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris’s presidential bid captured the world’s attention, Robert F Kennedy Jr’s backing of Donald Trump actually had a greater impact on the outcome of the 2024 election, according to a top pollster.
Speaking on his Risky Business podcast, Nate Silver – founder and former editor-in-chief of data-driven news outlet FiveThirtyEight – described RFK Jr’s endorsement the “most important” of the race so far.
“The most important endorsement in the race so far has probably been RFK Jr endorsing Trump,” he told co-host Maria Konnikova on Thursday.
On August 23, the independent presidential candidate announced that he had abandoned his campaign and was throwing his support behind Trump, after realizing he had no “realistic path to electoral victory”.
The third party candidate had garnered about 3.3 percent of support in the national polls prior to that point. He has since frantically attempted to wipe his name from the ballots – particularly swing states – across the US, to avoid taking potential votes from Trump.
Silver, who previously correctly predicted the outcome of 49 out of 50 states when Barack Obama defeated John McCain in 2008, said that RFK Jr’s move coincided with a slight dip in Harris’s polling.
“Those voters are lost. That might have mattered a fair bit,” the pollster said, before clarifying a “fair bit” meant about half a point.
Weeks after RFK Jr backed Trump – and mere moments after Harris and Trump exchanged barbs in the presidential debate – Swift announced her endorsement for the Harris campaign in an Instagram post, signed off as the “Childless Cat Lady” – a jibe at Ohio Senator JD Vance and his resurfaced sexist comments.
Despite more than 400,000 voters clicking on Swift’s link to the voter registration site vote.gov in the immediate aftermath, the singer’s endorsement failed to move the dial, Silver said.
“The biggest pop star in the world endorses you and you can barely see any difference in the polls,” he said.
Her previous backing of President Joe Biden in the 2020 election might have taken away the surprise factor, he added. “I think people assume that she was on the Harris bandwagon already,” explained Silver – who made his name taking aim at stat-adverse, poll-denying pundits and politicians.
Harris currently holds a 2.8-point lead over Trump in the latest average of national polls.
Even the vice presidential debate on Tuesday evening is expected to have only had a miniscule impact on the overall ticket, despite a CBS flash survey of voters marginally pitting Vance as the winner. Only one percent of voters who tuned into the debate said it had changed their minds about their decision in the November election, according to a separate CNN snap poll.
