No Minor Party or Independent Presidential Candidate in Any State Held Balance of Power

Posted on by November 16, 2024

At last week’s election, the only states in which one of the presidential candidates got less than 50% of the total vote were Michigan and Wisconsin. And even in those two states, the margin between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris was greater than the vote for any single minor party or independent candidate.

Comments

No Minor Party or Independent Presidential Candidate in Any State Held Balance of Power — 30 Comments

  2. I’d like to point out that those were the only two swing states where RFK Jr. was still on the ballot. The argument could still be made that he had an impact on swinging the election, by dropping out. At the time RFK Jr. dropped out, he was polling around 4% in those states. If only half of his supporters switched over to Trump (and most of his remaining supporters voted for him anyway or went somewhere other than Harris, such as to Jill Stein, for example, or simply didn’t vote) then that 2% that switched their vote to Trump would still be larger than Trump’s margin of victory in either state.

    Also, by remaining on the ballot (against his choice) the 0.5% that RFK Jr. did get was enough to keep Trump from reaching 50%, which is significant in and of itself. That means that Trump can hardly claim to have a mandate from voters in those states (although he will claim that anyway) and RFK Jr.’s votes also would have been enough to force a runoff, if we actually required a majority vote in each state to win that state’s electoral votes. That is one electoral reform that every state should seriously look into, so that we never get another Ross Perot 1992 scenario again, with Bill Clinton getting elected with only around 43% percent of the popular vote.

  5. RFK Jr got over 1% in Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington, and West Virginia. If he had not withdrawn he probably would have got between2% and 3% nationwide. He would have been on the ballot in every state except New York.

  6. Pennsylvania had also kicked RFK Jr. off the ballot at the time he withdrew. RFK Jr. dropped his appeal of that case, so we have no way of knowing how that would have turned out, if he had stayed in the race.

  16. Kennedy was cratering at breakneck speed when he dropped out. I stand by 1%. Unfortunately there’s no way to know, so 2% is plausible.

  17. Kennedy had been around 10% before Biden dropped out. That gave Democratic-leaning Kennedy supporters an excuse to “go home” and switch to Harris, which cost Kennedy about half of his support. Kennedy had been drawing roughly equally from both sides before that. Kennedy’s polling numbers had stabilized around roughly 4% – 5% before he dropped out. It is probably safe to assume that the vast majority of that remaining support was leaning toward Trump, even before the endorsement. I still stand by roughly half of that total (2% – 2.5%) as a conservative estimate of Kennedy supporters who actually turned out to vote for Trump, which is greater than Trump’s margin of victory in some of the swing states.

  19. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act

    TRUMP NOISES ABOUT USING USA ARMED FORCES TO ARREST/CAPTURE INVADERS/ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS —

    VIA ONE MORE ***NATIONAL EMERGENCY***.

    COMMIES DONKEYS ALL HAVE 2 AMDT ARMS AND AMMO READY FOR INSTANT USE ???

    COMMIE DONKEY GUVS ON 24/7 ALERT — TO USE STATE *NATIONAL GUARDS* AGAINST TRUMP SUBVERSIONS OF USA CONST AND LAWS ???

    2 AMDT – DIRECT RESULT OF 19 APR 1775 IN MASS – MASS MINUTEMEN IN MASS MILITIA UNITS [ AND MANY ARMED LOCAL FOLKS NOT IN ANY MASS MILITIA UNIT ] COUNTER-ATTACK BRIT ARMY UNITS BAAAACK TO BOSTON — DAY 1 OF AM REV WAR. 1775-1784

  23. If AZ is going to keep linking various articles, the best way to respond is with links to articles from The Onion. Let’s just derail the entire thread with various unrelated, irrelevant links.

  26. It correctly predicted that eating pets would become a major election issue long before anyone else did.

  27. That was a one-trick pony. (Kind of gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.”)

    Also, I’d say that RFK Jr. predicted that about a decade in advance. Remember the whole story about the dead bear cub he left in Central Park in 2014? Remember the reason why he picked up that bear cub in the first place? Find anyone else who was farther ahead of the curve than that.

  28. It also correctly predicted that Puerto Rico would be more important than in most presidential elections.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.