What happens if RFK Jr drops out? Where polls say his voters will go

Rumors are swirling that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could drop out of the presidential race this week, with reports that his team has courted both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump for a possible partnership.

RFK Jr.’s running mate Nicole Shanahan has outright said that the candidate may “walk away right now and join forces with Donald Trump”.

With FEC filings showing that his campaign donations aren’t keeping up with spending, there are reports that RFK Jr. will step down as early as Friday.

But regardless of whether the third-party candidate will endorse Trump, Harris, or neither — where will his voters go, according to the polls?

Polling for RFK Jr. has been notoriously hard to pin down, with significant variation in polling. That’s often the case with smaller, third-party candidates.

Unlike Democrats or Republicans, it can be difficult to identify specific traits or demographics that link those voting for RFK Jr., especially since they are dispersed across the United States.

So here is what we do know about his voters.

Ever since Harris entered the race, RFK Jr. lost a sizeable amount of momentum in the polls, and he hasn’t been able to pick it back up again.

Just before Biden dropped out, RFK Jr. had been polling between 8.5 per cent to 10 per cent of the national vote. Since July 21, however, he has been hovering around just 5 per cent of the vote — and that number seems to be going down.

So what happened? This dip may partly be explained by the fact that voters often turn to third-party candidates for lack of a ‘better option’, and because they want a fresh face. By replacing Biden with Harris, some of those cries for change were answered.

So, who has stuck around?

The latest YouGov/Economist poll, undertaken partly