Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anticipated exit from the presidential race could benefit Donald Trump, giving the Republican a small but potentially significant boost in the tight election fight with resurgent Democrats led by newly minted nominee Kamala Harris. Kennedy filed to remove himself from the ballot in Arizona on Thursday, a spokesman for the secretary of state confirmed. He has scheduled an event Friday near where Trump will also be holding a rally.

in a close election, even 1 or 2 percentage points could swing competitive states and determine the outcome. In a Wall Street Journal national poll of the contest released in late July after Harris entered the race, Kennedy received 4% support. That was down from 7% in early July—when Biden was still in the contest. Meanwhile, Harris has reversed or narrowed Trump’s leads in key battleground states where Biden had trailed, and she now leads in national polls. She speaks at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday night. A Kennedy departure would likely help Trump, pollsters say. Many disillusioned Democrats who initially said they might back Kennedy already moved to Harris after Biden dropped out. That left mostly dissatisfied Republicans in the Kennedy column—and they may be more inclined to pick Trump over Harris if Kennedy now exits. “The RFK curiosity on the left is gone,” said Sarah Longwell, a Republican focus-group specialist who opposes Trump. The remaining Kennedy voters are “Trumpy people, and so he will pick up those voters” if the idiosyncratic independent drops out and endorses Trump, she said.

Wall Street Journal polling backs up that notion. Voters supporting third-party or independent candidates—nearly all of them backing Kennedy—had a negative view of Trump in the Journal’s late-July poll, but they held an even more negative view of Harris. With Kennedy and other alternative candidates off the ballot, half of the voters backing them would support Trump and one-quarter would back Harris, the late-July poll found. Harris’s 1-point lead with Kennedy in the race turned into a 2-point deficit without him. “There will be a higher percentage that will want to go to Trump, that’s for sure,” said Larry Sharpe, who directs outreach for American Values 2024, the super PAC that is backing Kennedy, and thought there was still a chance he wouldn’t drop out.

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