Online bettors think there's a chance Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney will endorse Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris ahead of November's election. According to those close to Romney, that's a bad bet.
A growing number of Republicans have publicly endorsed Harris or said they plan to cast a ballot for her in November. Earlier this month, former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney said she and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, plan to vote for Harris.
As of Tuesday, the online betting market Polymarket estimated the chances of a Romney endorsement to be about 18%. The odds that Romney would back Harris surged to 56% following Trump's disastrous debate performance.
"Very doubtful," one Romney confidant told Utah Political Watch.
Asking Romney about who he plans to vote for in November is usually an easy story for journalists, especially following a sensational story about Trump. He usually declines to answer, like he did when CNN asked him last week.
Last year, Romney said he would be open to voting for a Democrat for president but would write in his wife Ann's name if the major party nominees were Trump and Joe Biden. Romney's office would not say whether he might vote for Harris now that Biden is out of the race.
Romney has been one of the most high-profile Republican critics of Trump since he famously called him a "con man," a "phony," and a "fraud" in a speech at the University of Utah in 2016. He was the first sitting U.S. Senator in history to vote to convict a president from the same party in Trump's 2019 impeachment trial for abuse of power. He also voted to convict Trump for inciting an insurrection after a mob of his supporters violently attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.