I don’t understand why it is taken for granted that if Stein wasn’t a candidate the people who vote for her would be voting for the Democrats instead. Just as likely they would not vote at all or vote for some other protest candidate.
I saw some stats on this in another thread, most third party voters wouldn’t be voting if their candidate wasn’t on the ballot, and most third party voters benefit Democrats down ballot. The spoiler candidate logic has always been sketchy.
The spoiler candidate logic has always been sketchy.
it depends on how popular third party is. If they’re getting 20-30% of the vote but no more it’s extremely common for them to drop out to support the primary instead.
Anything lower than 10% and it probably doesn’t matter much. RFK jr is a decent exmaple of this, although he was more “bipartisan” in terms of support, apparently.
The last US Presidential election decided with more than a 10% margin was Regan. The only vote with above a 5% margin this millennium was Obama’s first term.
“Anything lower than 10% and it probably doesn’t matter much” is a weird take.
As in that’s such a small group they are probably more dedicated to their candidate and won’t vote for anyone else.
Again. You can’t expect to remove candidates from a ballot and their support will all just vote Democrat. It’s a false logic to assume they belong to anywhere else other than their vote block.
When you have a large base that small percentage that’s willing to vote off base ends up being a larger percentage of the vote overall as well.
Currently you would have to get every single last green party voter to give up and vote Blue which is an impossible ask. So even at 5% of the vote I’m not sure they could swing an election with enough if their candidate asked nicely.
They went high with their estimate though.
I don’t understand why it is taken for granted that if Stein wasn’t a candidate the people who vote for her would be voting for the Democrats instead. Just as likely they would not vote at all or vote for some other protest candidate.
I saw some stats on this in another thread, most third party voters wouldn’t be voting if their candidate wasn’t on the ballot, and most third party voters benefit Democrats down ballot. The spoiler candidate logic has always been sketchy.
it depends on how popular third party is. If they’re getting 20-30% of the vote but no more it’s extremely common for them to drop out to support the primary instead.
Anything lower than 10% and it probably doesn’t matter much. RFK jr is a decent exmaple of this, although he was more “bipartisan” in terms of support, apparently.
The last US Presidential election decided with more than a 10% margin was Regan. The only vote with above a 5% margin this millennium was Obama’s first term.
“Anything lower than 10% and it probably doesn’t matter much” is a weird take.
As in that’s such a small group they are probably more dedicated to their candidate and won’t vote for anyone else.
Again. You can’t expect to remove candidates from a ballot and their support will all just vote Democrat. It’s a false logic to assume they belong to anywhere else other than their vote block.
When you have a large base that small percentage that’s willing to vote off base ends up being a larger percentage of the vote overall as well.
Currently you would have to get every single last green party voter to give up and vote Blue which is an impossible ask. So even at 5% of the vote I’m not sure they could swing an election with enough if their candidate asked nicely.
They went high with their estimate though.