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Sabato dismisses Trump boost from RFK Jr. endorsement

Political scientist Larry Sabato dismissed the possibility that former President Trump’s popularity could increase after independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. endorsed him last week.

Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and editor-in-chief of the election prediction site Sabato’s Crystal Ball, suggested Friday that not all of Kennedy’s supporters will vote for Trump. Kennedy announced Friday that he was suspending his campaign activities and endorsing the former president.

Sabato said: MSNBC Kennedy’s popularity has reportedly declined since Vice President Harris announced his candidacy for the White House last month.

“His approval ratings have plummeted since Kamala Harris was elected,” Sabato said of Kennedy.

“When he entered the election, his approval rating was in the high teens, some polls had him in the low 20s, but now he’s at 5 or 6 percent in some states and those polls are out of date,” he continued. “The Democratic National Convention has just happened, and one network poll just a few days ago had him at 2 percent.”

Harris has been gaining momentum in national and battleground state polls, narrowing the gap on former President Trump. Sabato said Friday there was no guarantee Kennedy’s supporters would switch to Trump and that some voters might choose to vote for someone other than Trump or Harris.

“There are people who think that because they support Trump, they can just move that 2 percent to Trump’s base,” Sabato said. “They don’t know much about politics. It doesn’t work that way. It’s not going to work that way.”

Sabato also suggested that RFK Jr. had failed to “profit” off of the Kennedy name.

His comments also came after the Trump campaign released a memo from pollster Tony Fabrizio suggesting that Trump would win the majority of Kennedy’s supporters in a head-to-head matchup with Harris.

In the three-way race between Kennedy, Trump and Harris, the vice president holds a 5.6 percentage point lead over Trump, according to a Hill/Decision Desk average of national polls. Kennedy’s approval rating is about 2.8 percent, according to the average.

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