A CNN/TIME poll of the Nevada U.S. Senate race shows that Scott Ashjian’s presence on the ballot as the Tea Party candidate does not injure the Republican nominee, Sharron Angle. See it here. Scroll down to Nevada.
The pollster first got these results: Sharron Angle, Republican, 42%; Harry Reid, Democrat, 40%; Scott Ashjian, 7%; None of the Above or Other, 10%.
Then the pollster asked respondents to imagine that Angle and Reid are the only two names on the ballot, and asked how they would vote. The results: Sharron Angle 47%; Harry Reid 45%; would refuse to vote for either 8%.
This evidence corroborates survey research and election returns research showing that Ralph Nader did not injure John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. It confirms the findings of the research done by Samuel Lubell about the 1948 presidential election, showing that Henry Wallace helped, and did not injure, Harry Truman. It matches the findings of the social psychology research about three-cornered choices generally, presented in the book “Predictably Irrational.” Yet it completely contradicts the perceived wisdom that a minor party of the “right” injures Republicans, and a minor party of the “left” injures Democrats. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link.
Harry Reid 2010! We need you! Dump Angle!!! Trade a Senate Majority Leader?!? For what?!?
Sharron Angle is a dangerous extremist. Her casual talk of using “second amendment remedies” aka GUNS against elected officials is scary! Reid has his problems, but at least he’s not talking about overthrowing the US government.
Thanks for more evidence that people can and should vote for the best candidate, and not for the one they think will win….
But I don’t think that anyone believes that Nader didn’t cost Gore Florida.
Ashjian won’t hurt either of them because of how his reputation has been exposed time and again, including Syd James’s testimony, which has hurt him greatly.
Hopefully Tim Fasano does better then Ashjian.
Only the Election Day poll counts.
All pre-election stuff is hype/lies — how many folks now LIE to pollsters for sabotage purposes ???
I know many people who don’t buy the whole lame excuse that it was Nader’s fault that Gore lost. It was GORE’S fault he lost. Had Gore not been so lame, many of the other nearly 3 mil 2000 Nader voters would have considered Gore (not me of course).
It’ll be interesting to see what excuse the Democrats come up with this Novemeber to excuse their rout.
I can’t help but think that had the IAP not squandered so much money and resources trying to get the “Tea Party” candidate off the ballot, the IAP candidate wouldn’t be running so low in the polls.
@ #4 – I DO believe that Ralph Nader took some votes in 2000 that otherwise would have gone to the Democrats. But I don’t believe Nader was the reason Al Gore lost in Florida.
According to “House of Bush, House of Saud” by Craig Unger, there were 90,000 Arab American votes cast in Florida in 2000, and they split 50/50 between George W Bush and Ralph Nader – apparently they believed the Gore/Lieberman ticket would be too pro-Israel.
Nader received 90,000 votes, so half came from Arab Americans. Had Nader not been on the ballot, presumably most of the Arab American votes he received would have gone to Bush, and given him a plurality in Florida. Some of the other votes would have gone to other third party candidates.
So I am not convinced that without Nader, Gore would have carried Florida.
Nader did not cost Gore. It would be more in interesting to see what effect Tim Fasano would have on Angle because of her former ties to the IAP.
In the 2000 election , Al Gore, Jr., did not win his home state of Tennessee, thus coming short in the electoral college and costing him the Presidency….
As Ralph Nader himself has rather patiently explained in speech after speech, the right question to ask isn’t “did Nader cost Gore Florida or didn’t he?” but rather “what factors cost Gore Florida?” He has also mentioned numerous times that Al Gore himself has never blamed him and, if anything, has been rather gracious in taking the high road with him over the last ten years.
One of those factors is certainly Ralph Nader competing with Gore for votes in the state of Florida. I have never denied that. Obviously it’s highly likely that a sufficient number of Nader votes would have gone to Gore had the Green Party not appeared on the ballot, or had they nominated someone significantly less well known than Nader.
The problem is when you limit the scenario to that one single variable, which is irrational. Hyperventilating Democrats, in my experience, rarely seem aware of or even willing to consider any other possibilities here, and as everyone who reads this blog already knows, there are many. Tennessee (including Gore’s own congressional district, which he did not carry), Arkansas, Katherine Harris, the weak Florida Democratic Party, the failure of the mayor of Miami to be aggressive in turning out the vote, the US Supreme Court, the lack of aggressive follow-through in terms of vote recounting, the 250,000 Florida Democrats who voted for Bush (astounding…..had less than 1,000 of them changed their minds in the voting booth, game over), the 100,000 self-described LIBERALS who said they voted for Bush (even more astounding), the three other left wing 3rd party candidates on the ballot (David McReynolds gets a hoot over being “blamed” for “costing Gore the election”)……..on and on and on.
Nader was one factor (for which I don’t apologize, and neither has he, nor should he). Above are plenty of others. Why single out one and ignore the rest? There’s lots of so-called “blame” to go around. If you want to argue endlessly over a ten-year-old election, that is.
Gene: what is Craig Unger’s source for the 50/50 split claim regarding Arab Americans in Florida, and on what basis do you assume that most of his alleged 45,000 A.A. votes for Nader would have gone to Bush? Was there any polling done on this basis at the time? I’m not necessarily denying that all of this is the case, I’m interested in knowing how solid the data are or whether this is all guesswork.
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David @ #12 – I guess I overestimated Nader’s popularity among Arab Americans in Florida, and underestimated Bush’s popularity.
On page 215 of “House of Bush, House of Saud” Unger says:
“according to an exit poll of Muslims in Florida conducted by the American Muslim Alliance, 91% voted for Bush, 8% for Nader and only 1% for Gore. Likewise, the Tampa Bay Islamic Center estimated that 55,000 Muslims in Florida voted and that 88% favored Bush. All of which meant that the margin of victory for Bush among Florida Muslims was many, many times greater than his tiny statewide margin of victory of 537 votes.”
Mea culpa, my first post was wrong, but Unger still provides info that lets Nader off the hook.
Thank you David Gaines for succinctly summarizing the reasons why Nader didn’t “cost Gore the election,” or “hand the White House to Bush,” or “is to blame for Iraq, etc.” I have expanded on all these and many other facts and statistics over the years, including various polls that even Al From of the DLC agreed showed that without Nader in the race, Bush would have won by a full percentage point.
But it’s all moot, because, according to the media consortium review of all possible voting outcomes in Florida, GORE WON FLORIDA! Had Gore insisted on a FULL statewide recount, and fought for it, we wouldn’t be having this argument at all. Amazing that whiny Dembots still pull the Nader-baiting card after all these years, and refuse to consider the cumulative evidence that Nader didn’t “cause” Gore’s NEAR-loss (many Nader supporters switching at the last minute probably helped Gore WIN in Florida, as Nader’s poll numbers dropped from about 7% to 3% the last week!), but that since Gore WON, the question should be, “Why didn’t Gore fight to secure his win?”
1. The spoiler effect is real whether you want to believe it or not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoiler_effect
2. First-past-the-post voting is deeply stupid.
Just because someone opines in Wikipedia that there’s a “spoiler effect” doesn’t make it real, whether YOU want to believe it or not. (The number of logical and factual errors in that article re 2000 are staggering.)
It’s political bigotry on its face, and is premised on an entitlement of “parties” (particularly two entrenched wings of ONE corporate duopoly uniparty in the US) to be in charge of who we get to choose between, something the Founding Fathers never intended.
That said, first-past-the-post voting (except in two-person races, obviously) IS stupid, and ranked voting should have been instituted universally long ago; that it hasn’t been is likely due to the whiners WANTING to prevent alternative choices, and to have scapegoats to blame for their own failures.