The June 2009 issue of the Journal of Marketing Research has an article, “Could Ralph Nader’s Entrance and Exit Have Helped Al Gore?”. The three authors are University of Iowa Professor William Hedgcock, Professor Akshay Rao of the University of Minnesota, and Professor Haipeng Chen of Texas A&M University. On September 29, the University of Iowa News Service sent out this press release, publicizing the article.
The article is in Volume 46, pages 330-343, of the Journal of Marketing Research. It depends on experimental research conducted by the authors. The thesis is that when undecided people make a decision about something, whether it’s a political candidate or a brand of soda, and identify with that decision, that when their original choice becomes unavailable, they select an alternative option with the most similar attributes. UPDATE: here is a link to a preliminary draft of the article.
The premise of the article seems to be that supporters of a third party candidate “come into” the election supporting the third party candidate because he/she best represents the self-image of the voter. Then when he/she realizes the third party candidate has no chance the voter switches support to the remaining candidate who best represents their political views.
Brilliant! Third parties as political fly paper.
What a load of bollocks.
The major parties know that theory is valid, which is why their party leadership support far-leaning, often critical members of their own parties like Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul, rather than utilize their fundraising resources to move them out to the Greens or Libertarians. How many tens of thousands of disaffected Democrats and Republicans stay in those parties because of the glimmer of hope Kucinich and Paul provide them? As a Green Party activist, I know I’ve talked to way too many Democrats who believe that Dennis Kucinich is leading internal reform of the Democratic Party, so they stay rather than switch to Green. Kucinich himself has stated that he sees himself serving a “flypaper” role for progressives within the Democratic Party. Many Libertarians believe Ron Paul serves a similar purpose to keep Libertarians from giving up on the Republican Party.
The article, when it refers to “original choice[s] becom[ing] unavailable” might also refer to ballot access surprises, like an Oklahoman seeing Ralph Nader on TV, going to vote for him, learning that Nader was not on the ballot in Oklahoma in 2000, and voting for Gore instead. That also sounds like a valid theory.
Brian –
Polar bears aren’t attracted to flypaper. Neither are “none of the above” voters who comprise a large percentage of voters who would have cast a vote for Ralph Nader in 2000. Let’s be honest and face the fact that protest against the “duopoly” was for the most part Nader’s appeal in 2000. Why people drawn to Nader as an object of protest then then surrender their primary principle and vote for Gore, or for Bush for that matter?
This is just self-serving fantasy.
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One more useless publish or perish piece of junk — attracting lots of party hacks and flies ???
P.R. and A.V. – pending MAJOR education about head to head math.
The preliminary draft of the study is too obscure and relies on counter-factuals to make its point.
In reality, there is another way to look @ 2000 that let’s Nader off the hook for throwing the election.
The election was ultimately decided in Florida, where Ralph Nader received 90,000 votes. According to “House of Bush, House of Saud†by Craig Unger, 90,000 Arab Americans voted in Florida, and split almost evenly between George W Bush and Ralph Nader. So half of Nader’s votes came from Arabs, who otherwise would probably have voted for Bush, because of the belief that Democrats are too pro-Israel.
Since half of Nader’s votes presumably came from Bush, and some of the other half probably would never have voted for Gore, Nader probably hurt Bush in Florida more than Gore.
Brian @ #2 – Ron Paul has gotten some libertarians to remain in or rejoin the Republican Party, but more have done so because they don’t see the Libertarian Party being effective.
In fact many who have remained in The Libertarian Party actively backed Ron Paul last year as the most prominent public figure promoting a libertarian viewpoint.
Likewise many Greens remain in the Green Party but still campaigned for Dennis Kucinich. Nader’s running mate Matt Gonzalez campaiged for Kucinich before joining Nader’s ticket.
Third party activists in a two-party system have to be creative in supporting insurgent campaigns.
If Gore-Lieberman would have dropped out Nader would have landslided the bumbling Gov. from Texas with the horrible record. Nader was the only candidate having super rallies that sold out venues like Madison Square Garden.
As it turned out Gore-Lieberman won Florida and were too stupid to call for a full recount because they didn’t care what the voters wanted. To say otherwise is to rewrtie history.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2001/111201a.html
Al Bore ran a terrible campaign on a neo-liberal platform that was virtually the same as the neo-cons. They had to shut Nader out of the debate in order to keep his poll numbers down.
Gore and Bush were wise to shut Nader out of the debates because they would have been schooled! But keep the politcal bigotry and misinformation rolling along!
From 8 –
“A neo liberal program that was virtually the same as the neo-cons.”
——————
I was wrong. Polar bears LOVE fly paper, since polar bears are virtually the same as flies.
It is true, and what the Green Party has long said.
Thanks for the story.
I don’t think that “decoy dynamics” were the main reason Bush won the 2000 election, or even a major reason. I only wanted to point out that this theory is at least recognized by the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, and has some merit on its face on account of that. I’ve heard state and national Democratic leaders talk about the value of someone like Dennis Kucinich keeping people involved in the Democratic Party, so I know that this theory is partially true. Was it true for a larger number of Nader-turned-Gore voters than voters who would have voted for Gore if Nader were not in the race? I don’t know, and that’s not my argument.
Perhaps the better metaphor is a magnet, not flypaper. “Attraction effects”, as the authors of the paper call it, may not keep Greens and Libertarians, just for example, stuck in the Democratic and Republicans parties, but keep them nearby, like a magnet alternately attracting and repelling as something gets moves around it. I guess the point is that social sciences are not good at proving causalities, only at illustrating tendencies. So if you’re looking for proof of why Gore lost and why people affiliate with the parties they do, I guess this is just one of the factors you have to take into account.
Brian Bittner Says:
September 29th, 2009 at 9:31 am
… [snip] … As a Green Party activist, I know I’ve talked to way too many Democrats who believe that Dennis Kucinich is leading internal reform of the Democratic Party, so they stay rather than switch to Green. … [snip].
Phil Sawyer responds:
Something about that statement does not seem correct to me. I think that most of the Kucinich supporters in the Democratic Party have to be cognizant of the fact that they comprise a distinct minority withing the Party. It is probable that some of them are just too fearful about leaving the comfort zone of the largest and oldest political party in our country. Others, I think, are probably just turned off by a lot of the over-the-top statements and bad decisions that come from Old Guard Leaders in the smaller parties (the prime example of this is the Peace and Freedom Party of California). If there was a new, Progressive Party (on a national level), that might be enough to get some of them. Certainly not all, though. I have been through this too many times to know just how difficult it is to start and grow a new political party in this country. We did pretty darn well with the Reform Party, though!
Of course, Phil. I know that as a Green, I am a “distinct minority” within the American political system. But I believe that minority is important and I want to work to make it grow, so I do what I do. “Kucinich Democrats”, at least the ones I know, know that the majority of the leadership of the Democratic Party is not with them or Kucinich on most of the issues, but they believe in their cause so they do what they do. Change has to start somewhere – probably not from the top – so you latch on to what you can and envision how to make changes from there.
“If Gore-Lieberman would have dropped out Nader would have landslided the bumbling Gov. from Texas with the horrible record. Nader was the only candidate having super rallies that sold out venues like Madison Square Garden.”
It is one thing to be enthusiastic for candidate or campaign but don’t take it to the level of delusion. A candidate that pulled less than 3% of the vote and was about 48 million votes behind the next candidate was not going to win regardless of whether Gore-Liberman dropped. Super-Rallies are nice but clearly they were not an indicator of Nader having mass cross sectional broad based support, they may well of being an indicator that the supporters he did have were very dedicated.
When Clinton and Gore had their hair pulling spat over the 2000 election loss in the White House, Nader’s name never came up. The big lie about Nader was useful in 2004 to keep down the anti-war vote as Nader votes in contested and uncontested states and in 2008 to keep down single payer as a Nader vote without the Democratic candidate’s need to co-opt these progressive issues as Truman did in 1948 and Roosevelt before him. A useful lie that killed off the progressives twice. And here you are with an Obama war and no public health care for all. And you wonder why?
As stated by the Social Science Research Council in a post-2004 election report, “the largest GOP increase in turnout was in Oklahoma (up 7.4 percentage points), followed by Florida (7.2)â€. Bush’s 2000 victory in Florida was only by 537 electorate votes.
I would argue that many of the votes that went to Bush in 2000 by percentage of the total population were from Cuban Americans. Bush’s triumph in the southern swing state can be accounted for the 82% of Cuban-Americans voting for the him. This goes to show that a small portion of the overall population can have a momentous effect on the election outcome, especially in states with a diminutive margin between the candidates running. The reason Florida even became a battleground state in the first place was because Governor Jeb Bush’s family ties, his upsetting of black voters, and Gore’s running mate, Joe Liebermann encompassing political clout with Florida’s Jewish and senior communities. The foremost social group in the 2000 election though showed up to the polling places in large numbers, as Cuban-Americans held contempt for the Democratic decision by Janet Reno to send Elian Gonzalez back to Cuba. If the state’s 8% makeup of Cuban-Americans did not show up to vote on Election Day, Gore may have very well been declared the winner.
That being said, there were also so many factors that led to the demonization of Nader, namely the mass media. And remember the infamous butterfly ballot? On The Today Show, November 9, 2000, Pat Buchanan said,
“When I took one look at that ballot on Election Night … it’s very easy for me to see how someone could have voted for me in the belief they voted for Al Gore.”
It would be shameful not to mention Greg Palast’s analysis of the election. He stated “If Vice President Al Gore is wondering where his Florida votes went, rather than sift through a pile of chad, he might want to look at a “scrub list” of 173,000 names targeted to be knocked off the Florida voter registry by a division of the office of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris.” Most of them were historically Democratic Party voters by racial statistics.
I think a continuous dialogue is necessary to see the overall picture within our democratic failures. Instant Run-off Voting is a prime example of how we can alleviate some of these serious problems. Nader, if anything, brought that to light. He also let me vote on principle in 2004, rather than two sides of the same coin.