Ross Douthat, the youngest regular New York Times columnist on politics, and a conservative, here laments that Mitt Romney didn’t decide to run as an independent presidential candidate this year.
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This column in the Spokane Spokesman-Review suggests that there is anecdotal evidence that some Idaho Democrats are registering as Republicans just before the primary, so as to influence the outcome of Republican primaries.
The Alaska Democratic Party had its state convention May 14-15. It did not change its bylaws to say that independent candidates may file to run in Democratic primaries. Earlier the party had been so keen to make this change, it had filed a lawsuit against the state, to strike down the law that says only party members may run in Democratic primaries. But the state court ruled that the party didn’t have standing, since technically it still didn’t have any bylaws approving the idea.
It had been thought that the recent state convention might remedy that flaw in the lawsuit, so that the lawsuit could be re-filed. But instead, the convention took no action.
Fox News Polls released a presidential general election poll on May 18. Scroll down to question 4. The results: Donald Trump 42%, Hillary Clinton 39%, Gary Johnson 10%, other 2%, won’t vote 5%, don’t know 3%.
On May 17, Public Policy Polling released this 4-candidate general election presidential poll for Arizona. Go to the second half of the poll and scroll down to Question 5 for the results: Donald Trump 40%, Hillary Clinton 38%, Gary Johnson 6%, Jill Stein 2%, not sure 13%.