Here is a link to the Montana Secretary of State’s web page, showing the vote for U.S. House, election of May 25.
Comments
Link to Montana U.S. House Special Election Results — 7 Comments
The majority of Montanans are a joke to me.
Chad Roberts: Which state do you live in? I’m sure we can find some derogatory nonsense that fits your fellow citizens.
Wow! Chad Roberts… what can anyone say? You are entitled to your opinion, of course, but what a blanket statement. How would your statement look if you substituted a racial minority for Montanans?
If one looks at the returns by counties, one sees that there is an extreme variety of opinion in Montana, depending on which corner of the state. The southeast part of the state had a few counties with over 80% for the Republican nominee. The Democratic nominee carried about a dozen counties.
Related to the returns, Wicks was in double digits in a few counties. His highest percentage was 16.6% in the appropriately named “Liberty” county.
I’ve been critical of the amount of effort that the LP and LP candidates have put into 2017 special elections, but I can’t say the same thing about the effort that I observed in this race. The results reflect this: Wicks set a record in terms of the percentage vote that any third party candidate has received in Montana’s At Large District.
This also shows the growth of the LP. A decade ago, the LP wasn’t even a rounding error in terms of national vote totals. It’s now clear that they are the third largest party in America and capable of getting vote totals in the single digits. They need to be thinking about how to make that grow even further.
In some ways, I’m glad Gianforte eked out an outright majority. By doing so, the Democrats can’t make the “wasted vote” complaint against those who voted for Wicks. Of course, it is beyond laughable to suggest that everyone who voted for Wicks would have voted for Quist as their second choice. My guess is that the Wicks vote would have split slightly in favor of Gianforte.
I think a good growth strategy would be to make sure that the LP runs candidates in deeply red and deeply blue areas. The political argument to make (using a red area as an example) is that in this particular location, a Democrat is so burdened with the awful image of their national party that they can’t possibly win here. At the same time, you don’t want the Republican to have no competition. Therefore, the best way to take down the Republican is with someone not carrying that burden, which would be someone other than a Democrat. In other words, make the vote for the Democrat (in these places) the “wasted” vote. The reverse of this argument would be used in deeply Blue areas.
If you are running as a third party candidate, you start out thinking you’ll finish third. If you do the impossible and actually win, that means one of your two opponents finishes second and the other finishes third. My suggested strategy would be to start out to identify the candidate that would be most likely to finish third, and get him into third place. After that has been accomplished, then you become the primary opposition for the leading candidate, and you can start the process of taking him down.
In 2010 Mike Fellows got 5.742% for US House. Wicks looks like he ended up with 5.698%. Wicks did have 818 more votes, though – 21,509 for Wicks to 20,691 for Fellows.
Tom, I would have to disagree on Wicks really doing anything special here. As Jim pointed out about 2010, and in 2016 Rick Breckenridge got about 3.3% of the vote. Wicks additional vote pull over Breckenridge can simply be explained by his debate inclusion. Libertarians always pull in the 3% to 6% range in the state.
The majority of Montanans are a joke to me.
Chad Roberts: Which state do you live in? I’m sure we can find some derogatory nonsense that fits your fellow citizens.
Wow! Chad Roberts… what can anyone say? You are entitled to your opinion, of course, but what a blanket statement. How would your statement look if you substituted a racial minority for Montanans?
If one looks at the returns by counties, one sees that there is an extreme variety of opinion in Montana, depending on which corner of the state. The southeast part of the state had a few counties with over 80% for the Republican nominee. The Democratic nominee carried about a dozen counties.
Related to the returns, Wicks was in double digits in a few counties. His highest percentage was 16.6% in the appropriately named “Liberty” county.
I’ve been critical of the amount of effort that the LP and LP candidates have put into 2017 special elections, but I can’t say the same thing about the effort that I observed in this race. The results reflect this: Wicks set a record in terms of the percentage vote that any third party candidate has received in Montana’s At Large District.
This also shows the growth of the LP. A decade ago, the LP wasn’t even a rounding error in terms of national vote totals. It’s now clear that they are the third largest party in America and capable of getting vote totals in the single digits. They need to be thinking about how to make that grow even further.
In some ways, I’m glad Gianforte eked out an outright majority. By doing so, the Democrats can’t make the “wasted vote” complaint against those who voted for Wicks. Of course, it is beyond laughable to suggest that everyone who voted for Wicks would have voted for Quist as their second choice. My guess is that the Wicks vote would have split slightly in favor of Gianforte.
I think a good growth strategy would be to make sure that the LP runs candidates in deeply red and deeply blue areas. The political argument to make (using a red area as an example) is that in this particular location, a Democrat is so burdened with the awful image of their national party that they can’t possibly win here. At the same time, you don’t want the Republican to have no competition. Therefore, the best way to take down the Republican is with someone not carrying that burden, which would be someone other than a Democrat. In other words, make the vote for the Democrat (in these places) the “wasted” vote. The reverse of this argument would be used in deeply Blue areas.
If you are running as a third party candidate, you start out thinking you’ll finish third. If you do the impossible and actually win, that means one of your two opponents finishes second and the other finishes third. My suggested strategy would be to start out to identify the candidate that would be most likely to finish third, and get him into third place. After that has been accomplished, then you become the primary opposition for the leading candidate, and you can start the process of taking him down.
In 2010 Mike Fellows got 5.742% for US House. Wicks looks like he ended up with 5.698%. Wicks did have 818 more votes, though – 21,509 for Wicks to 20,691 for Fellows.
Tom, I would have to disagree on Wicks really doing anything special here. As Jim pointed out about 2010, and in 2016 Rick Breckenridge got about 3.3% of the vote. Wicks additional vote pull over Breckenridge can simply be explained by his debate inclusion. Libertarians always pull in the 3% to 6% range in the state.