Kamala Harris’ Chances of Winning Election Slide as RFK Jr. Might Drop Out

Vice President Kamala Harris’ odds of winning the 2024 presidential election have taken a hit with leading bookmakers over the past 24 hours following reports that independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might drop out of the race and endorse Donald Trump.
On Tuesday, Kennedy suggested he was ready to hold talks about stepping down from the 2024 race, writing on X, formerly Twitter: “As always, I am willing to talk with leaders of any political party to further the goals I have served for 40 years in my career and in this campaign.” In a podcast interview released that day, Nicole Shanahan, Kennedy’s running mate, said the pair could “walk away right now and join forces with Donald Trump.”
Following Shanahan’s comments, Harris’ chances of victory in November fell from 4/5 (55.6 percent) on Tuesday to 10/11 (52.4 percent) on Wednesday, bookmakers Bet365 and William Hill showed. Over the same period, the vice president’s odds of victory with bookmaker Betfair went from 4/5 (55.6 percent) to 5/6 (54.5 percent).
On August 10, Polymarket, self-described as the “world’s biggest prediction market,” forecast Harris would get 52 percent of the presidential election vote against Trump’s 45 percent. As of 5 a.m. ET on August 21, Trump had regained the lead, with 52 percent of support versus Harris’ 47 percent.
When asked on Tuesday about Shanahan’s suggestion that Kennedy could stand aside and endorse him, Trump said he’d “be open” to offering the independent candidate and vaccine skeptic a position in his administration if he won in November.
The Republican candidate said: “I didn’t know about RFK, but I like him and I respect him. You were saying, ‘Would I think about him for something?’ and the answer is yes. He’s a brilliant guy. He’s a very smart guy. I’ve known him for a long time. I didn’t know he was thinking about getting out, but if he is thinking about getting out, certainly I would be open to it.”
In his X post, Kennedy listed the goals he wanted to serve with his campaign: “Reversing the chronic disease epidemic, ending the war machine, cleaning corporate influence out of government and toxic pollution out of the environment, protecting freedom of speech, and ending politicization of enforcement agencies.”
Recent polling from The New York Times/Siena College found 41 percent of Kennedy supporters in the key battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin would vote for Trump if their preferred candidate dropped out of the race, against 27 percent for Harris.
Newsweek contacted the campaigns of Harris, Trump and Kennedy for comment by email outside regular office hours.
Harris’ worsening bookmaker odds coincided with the Democratic National Convention, which got underway in Chicago on Monday.
On Tuesday, former President Barack Obama criticized Trump while giving a speech at the event, saying the U.S. doesn’t need “four more years of bluster and bumbling and chaos.”
Referring to the Republican, Obama said: “Here’s a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago. It has been a consistent scream of gripes and grievances that’s actually been getting worse now that he’s afraid of losing to Kamala.
“There’s the childish nicknames, the crazy conspiracy theories, this weird obsession with crowd sizes.”
On Monday, President Joe Biden, who dropped out of the 2024 presidential race on July 21 and quickly endorsed Harris, told the convention crowd about his long political career.
He said: “America, I gave my best to you. I made a lot of mistakes in my career, but I gave my best to you.
“For 50 years, like many of you, I’ve given my heart and soul to our nation, and I’ve been blessed a million times in return with the support of the American people.”