Ranked Choice Voting Appears to Have Greatly Increased the Howie Hawkins Vote in Maine

Posted on by December 26, 2020
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Last month, Maine used ranked choice voting for president, the first state ever to do that.  Howie Hawkins, the Green Party nominee, polled slightly over 1.00% in Maine last month.  That made Maine his best state, by far.  His second highest percentage was Hawaii, with .67%, and no other state was higher than .52%.

One might say that Maine is always supportive of Green Party presidential nominees, and that is true, but not to that extent.  In 2016 Maine was Jill Stein’s sixth highest state.

Maine’s ranked choice voting for president doesn’t seem to have helped the Libertarian Party’s nominee Jo Jorgensen as much.  Maine was her 13th best state.  In 2016, Maine had been Gary Johnson’s 9th best state.  It may be that voter fear of “spoiling” is a greater problem for Green-leaning voters than for Libertarian-leaning voters.

The only other minor party candidate on the Maine ballot in 2020 was Rocky De La Fuente of the Alliance Party, who got .14% in Maine, his fifth best state.  He was on in 15 states in 2020.  It is tough to know if ranked choice voting helped him, because he wasn’t on the ballot in Maine in 2016.

Kanye West Vote Analysis

Posted on by December 25, 2020
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Kanye West was on the ballot in twelve states last month, but none of them were populous, so only 14.15% of the voters saw his name on their ballot.  In the states in which he was on the ballot, he polled .30% of the vote.

In the east, he was only on in Vermont, where he got .35%.

In the midwest, he was on in Iowa, Minnesota, and Oklahoma.  His vote in those three states was .26%.

In the south, he was on in Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee.  In those five states he got .30%.

In the west, he was on in Colorado, Idaho, and Utah.  In those three states he got .34%.  His best state in the nation was Utah, where he got .48%.  His best county in Utah was San Juan, with .65%.

He only got as much as 1% in one county in the U.S., Houston County in Tennessee, where he got 1.03%.  Houston County is in northwest Tennessee, is predominantly white, and was quite loyal to the Democratic Party until the last decade, but now it is strongly Republican.

Other counties in which he got at least .70% of the vote are, in order:

Chester County, Tennessee, .94%; Lincoln Co., Tn., .94%; Coffee County, Tn., .90%; Davidson Co., Tn., .84%; Hempstead Co., Ark., .84%; Lafayette Co., Ark., .82%; McNairy Co., Tn., .82%; Lafayette Co., Ark., .82%; Weakley Co., Tn., .81%; Decatur Co., Tn., .80%; Crittenden Co., Ark., .78%; Tunica Co., Miss., .76%; Lincoln Co., Ida., .72%; Dallas Co., Ark., .72%; Moore Co., Tn., .71%; Sevier Co., Tn., .71%; and Phillips Co., Ark., .70%.

Maine Green Party Showing for U.S. Senate Was the Best in Maine History for Any Third Party

Posted on by December 24, 2020
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Last month, the Maine Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate, Lisa Savage, polled 4.95%.  That was the highest showing for U.S. Senate in Maine for any party, other than the Republican and Democratic Parties, in history.  U.S. Senate elections have only existed in the U.S. starting in 1914.

The showing for Lisa Savage shows the power of having ranked choice voting, for boosting minor party vote showings.