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Stephen A. Smith has spent the past couple of years teasing a potential run for president. While he has has repeatedly said he isn’t interested, but he also hasn’t completely closed the door.
Now a new poll offers a mixed picture of what his political future could look like, as a small but real slice of voters would back him, but plenty more are quite actively against him.
The good news
The Bulwark and Pablo Torre Finds Out teamed up with YouGov to survey 1,417 American adults from Oct. 10-14 about politics and sports. Smith was among the figures included.
As Awful Announcing noted, the poll found that at least 6 percent of respondents would vote for Smith as an independent candidate in hypothetical 2028 matchups. That held whether the Democratic nominee was Gavin Newsom, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Mark Cuban, or Pete Buttigieg, with JD Vance as the Republican nominee.
Smith also drew 6 and 7 percent support in separate vice presidential questions on tickets led by Cuban and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly.
That’s a notable jump from a January 2025 poll, when just 2 percent of respondents said they would vote for him.
The bad news
While those numbers might seem to paint an optimistic outlook on Smith’s potential political career, the rest of the numbers weren’t anywhere near as kind.
“By contrast, neither side of the aisle likes Stephen A. Smith,” Brendan Hartnett of The Bulwark wrote. “His net favorability is 10 points underwater with Harris voters and 3 points underwater with those who voted for Trump.”
Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, Smith didn’t fare much better as a potential running mate.
“Thirty percent say Stephen A. Smith would be an unacceptable nominee, compared to only 7 percent who would be excited to have him on the ticket,” Hartnett wrote.
Men were also twice as likely as women to have an opinion of Smith, 67 percent compared to 34 percent. According to Hartnett, “those opinions skew negative.”
Smith’s background could be a problem, too. Just 5 percent of respondents said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who was a TV commentator, while 43 percent said they’d be less likely.
Smith has said that the biggest thing holding him back from a run is giving up his nine-figure salary at ESPN. Based on these numbers, he might want to hold onto it for now.
The post ‘Neither side of the aisle likes Stephen A. Smith’: Poll shows bad news for ESPN star appeared first on The Comeback: Today’s Top Sports Stories & Reactions.
https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/neither-side-aisle-likes-stephen-232903470.html
