Leaders of the Democratic Party continue saying they are worried that if Cornel West runs for president as the Green Party nominee, that will cause Donald Trump to win the 2024 election. Then they frequently assert that Jill Stein’s Green candidacy in 2016 caused Donald Trump to win that election. For example, this story says that a few days ago, David Axelrod said, “In 2016 the Green Party played an outsized role in tipping the election to Donald Trump.”

If reporters would do a minimal amount of research, they could point out that the 2016 exit polls show that Hillary Clinton did not lose any state due to the Jill Stein vote. All they need to do is google “Jill Stein exit polls”. Even in Michigan, which was the closest state Trump carried in 2016, the exit polls show that only 25% of the Stein voters said they would have voted for Hillary Clinton if Stein had not been running. And 14% of the Stein voters said they would have voted for Donald Trump if Stein had not been running. So in Michigan, Clinton only lost a net of 11% of the number of Stein voters, which was not enough to change the Michigan outcome.

Elite reporters and political strategists assume wrongly that most voters are ideological, as they themselves are. But political science research on voter behavior has long shown that a large share of voters are not ideological.

Professor William A. Galston, who is a scholar with the Brookings Institution, recently wrote that the 1948 presidential election is an instance at which minor parties injured the Democratic Party presidential campaign. President Harry Truman was running for re-election as the Democratic nominee, and former Vice-President Henry Wallace was the Progressive Party presidential nominee. Galston says the Wallace campaign hurt Truman, although Truman still won the election.

Pollster Samuel Lubell, who later became a political scientist, intensely studied the 1948 election, and determined that the presence of Henry Wallace in the race not only helped Truman, but that Truman would have lost without Wallace’s campaign.

Professor Galston kindly spoke with me after his piece was published, and he said he was not familar with the Lubell book “The Future of American Politics” that contained the research (published 1950), but that he certainly is aware of Samuel Lubell and that he would obtain the book and read it with interest, although he said he is very skeptical.

Last month, two other commentators wrote about the 1948 election and also did not seem familiar with the Lubell research. See this blog post from last month.

The recent Bookings Institution analysis can’t be linked, but anyone can find it by googling “William Galston” with “Cornel West”.