Although some national media figures have been saying they believe minor party candidates hurt Hillary Clinton, this article says many Colorado observers of politics believe that Colorado went for Clinton only because of the Gary Johnson campaign.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
How many States where the Stein pct was greater than the Trump-Clinton pcts ???
i.e. Stein causing Trump to win.
@Demo Rep
as of now there seem to be two states: Michigan and Wisconsin.
On my local CBS radio station today they seemed to imply just the opposite, that Johnson tipped Florida Trump’s way just by virtue of being greater than the margin. Not the full roast they gave Nader in 2000 but they cant seem to help themselves with this narrative.
There were 10 states in which Johnson covered the spread between Trump and Clinton
Won by Trump: Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, 85 electoral votes.
Won by Clinton: Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Colorado, 34 electoral votes
Split: Maine, 3 for Clinton, 1 for Trump
Yeah, pass the buck Republicans. Don’t tell yourselves that it was because you nominated a narcissistic buffoon.
Regarding covering the spread —
Jill Stein also covered the spread between Clinton and Trump in Michigan, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin. If we were to assume that Stein’s votes all came from Clinton, that would have flipped Michigan and Wisconsin (Michigan, though, hasn’t been called yet). On this same assumption, it would make no difference in NH.
McMuffin covered the spread between Clinton and Trump in Minnesota. McMuffin also covered the spread between Clinton and Trump in Utah, but the purpose of his candidacy wasn’t to take votes from Clinton; it was to take votes from Trump and Johnson, so he didn’t end up having an impact there.
TomP’s analysis was fascinating. We’ll never know how the Johnson voters would have voted without a Libertarian. Third party pundits have been all over the board without any facts as to whether he hurt Trump or Clinton more.
Stein and McMullin are a different story. Those voters were likely severely disaffected liberals and conservatives would would normally vote for the D or R respectively. But voters would have had the option to not show up or not vote (like Bush senior voted), so trying to guess their impact is also a fools errand.
Ranked Choice Voting would have made all these calculations very different, but then RCV will make the entire process very different and more able to represent the actual desires of voters. Let’s hope RCV becomes widely adopted in the next few election cycles before the country self-destructs. (It might self-destruct even with RCV, but IMO the chance of that is less than our current track.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2016
has lots of stats.
In 15 (repeat 15) States the votes for the listed 3rd parties/independents (mainly Johnson and Stein) was more than the Trump/Clinton differences — possible about 2 more States when stats are final.
What will the gerrymander oligarch MONSTERS in Devil City and all State capitols do ???
— other than continue the EVIL rotted minority rule ANTI-Democracy *system* ???
—-
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
Clinton’s victory margin in Minnesota and Virginia, two states thought to be uncompetitive to her benefit, was smaller than the number of votes Evan McMullin got.
It does make me wonder if McMullin had much broader ballot access, Hillary Clinton might’ve won the election.
Some surveys asked people indicating support for Johnson, for whom would they support between Trump and Clinton. The tendency was for support to shift equally or in favor of Clinton, among those who indicated they had an acceptable second choice. However, there was a decided correlation between the peel-off of support for Johnson, and the rise of support for Trump. Trump rise in the polls was mostly due to his success in consolidating support among self-identified Republicans and the securing the bulk of the Johnson peel-off vote.
If voters had some assurance that their vote wouldn’t be wasted (as they would have with instant run-off), it could be that we’d see a lot more support for candidates such as Johnson and McMullin. Perhaps Johnson would have won New Mexico and McMullin Utah, as Trump supporters might have named these other center-right candidates as acceptable second choices.
A couple corrections to prior posts: Virginia: Clinton received 49.9 percent of the vote. Third-parties had no impact in that state. Trump + Johnson + McMullin exceeded Clinton + Stein in the following states won by Clinton: CO, ME, NM, NV and MN, and also in NH still too close to call. My figures are from the Green Papers.
I do not know if I totally believe this claim!