...Because both 3rd Parties picked lousy candidates from an even worse primary pool.
This isn't necessarily directed at you, but I hear this point a lot from people who seem surprised that the third parties picked terrible people to run as their nominees, even during a historically bad election year for the main parties. The problem is that the third parties always run people of this caliber, since they have a much smaller pool of people to pick from and, out of that pool, you're unlikely to have very many "sane" candidates, as the majority of those would probably have already gone to one of the two major parties.
I know. That's why I tacked on the "even worse primary pool." I glanced at a Green primary debate that was on RT awhile ago and Samantha Bee covered the Libertarian final debate which was during their National convention. I was not that impressed by either.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
Given that it's now late October and Johnson still has ~5%, I think it's fair to say he's doing better than last time. But I don't think we can reasonably expect that to translate to 5% on election day, unless this year is a break from past experience.
Standard rule of thumb for 3rd Party candidates is take their polling support and cut it in half to get a ball park for their final votes. The last exception was Ross Perot, and the only 3rd Party candidate that is looking to beat that rule this election cycle is Evan McMullin.
The reason I've been ignoring that rule is because this hasn't been a particularly standard election (even though really it has; it's just a remix of previous elections to look like something new and interesting). I'm still on edge about using it because FiveThirtyEight is still reporting 15% undecided voters (compared to 5% in 2012), but as this trend continues, the Greens and Libertarians are not looking to do much better this time around despite Democrats and Republicans not being so popular...
...Because both 3rd Parties picked lousy candidates from an even worse primary pool. The Libertarians may still hit their mark, but they're likely going to have to hit back on McMullin hard and soon.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
Johnson's poll numbers have been sliding lately. RCP has at 5.9%, down from a high of 9.2% back in September. 538 has him at 5.7%, from a September high of 9.0%. Given that third party candidates tend to significantly underperform on election day as compared to their polls, is the dream of 5% dead?
Apparently the slide in third party candidate popularity as the election season progresses is actually quite normal.
It is normal, but Johnson's slide is outpacing the norm. Probably a combination of Aleppo and, like MrM0nd4y said, the growing awareness of McMullin for "normal" Republican-type voters.
Actually, everyone outside the major two parties is doing better than 2012. All 3rd Party Candidates made less than 2% of the vote in 2012. This time, that may be Jill Stein alone, and there's an abnormally large group of undecided voters compared to the previous cycle. And on top of that, Gary Johnson is still on track to get the Libertarian Party federal funding for the 2020 election, although that's not a comfortable certainty anymore.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
And that's generously assuming they can actually put together a real campaign in 2020. If the post-Perot reform party is any indication, they'll have a bit of trouble finding another viable candidate. Just watch a few questions from the libertarian primary debate to see what their second choices were like.
Part of the issue that came of The Reform Party is Ross Perot ran it as the Ross Perot Ego hour, and it ultimately collapsed on that schism because political parties cannot function as an extension of one person *hint, hint Trump*. Honestly their best hope is to run Bill Weld as their president next time and hope he can poach pick a decent running mate now that Gary Johnson basically gaffed himself out of the election. But yeah, there are factions within the Libertarian Party, and the faction that ran Gary Johnson (pre-getting an entire form of political gaffe named after him) is the faction that's trying to get the Libertarian Party to gain a larger stage.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
You're putting the cart before the horse. A good chunk of the reason no one votes for 3rd Party candidates is because of the stigma label "3rd Party."
Not even remotely the case. The stigms of the label third party comes from the fact that people very rarely vote for them, and people very rarely voting for them comes from their extremist and alienating viewpoints, and many times detachment from reality.
This has been a demonstrated fact throughout our country. We generally tend to have two dominant parties, with a third party only coming into prominence when the two dominant parties either are not addressing a major issue, or have candidates that are exceedingly unpopular. This is because the two dominant parties tend to be centrist, with the third party occupying an extreme viewpoint and/or based entirely around a single issue.
You're making a huge assumption that people know 3rd Parties are extremist or have alienating viewpoints. That may be the case for you, to a lesser extent me, and a small part of the population, but in my experience, when I've dropped the phrase "Green Party," people are generally familiar with the names Ralph Nader or Jill Stein, and about the Party themselves they think either spoiler effect, "who?", and/or vaccines, which is not coincidentally the only issue oriented headline Jill Stein made in multiple sources around the time of the conventions when Bernie Sanders was making his switch to Hillary Clinton. There's so many more things to (dis)agree with the party on, yet they don't come up. Why? I say because they're not reported. Some people go out looking for all their options. Some people don't and stick with what's presented to them. You and I fall into the former, and you are disregarding the latter while what I'm saying is the latter is much bigger than you are giving it credit for, even if with the Green Party the current result of both is the same (the vast majority vote for Democrats instead).
And as a fun aside, I talked to our State Democrats about the State Green Party, and they don't think our State Green Party is either extreme and only mildly alienating. In fact, since I live in a Red State, about half the time two Parties are in complete cooperation because there is a host of issues they both agree they either of them could handle better than Republicans. It was described to me as a Bernie v. Hillary kind of thing: tense, yet good sportsmanship as opposed to the toxic partisanship of Republicans v. Democrats. The criticism that my local Democrats levied was that the Green Party has no ground game and their staunch rejection of large donations (i.e. via unions or people with a stronger progressive vision) is starving their organizing efforts.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
The two party "lock" exists because people aren't voting for anyone else, bLatch.
You're putting the cart before the horse. A good chunk of the reason no one votes for 3rd Party candidates is because of the stigma label "3rd Party." Many people don't ever go past that phrase to even learn about platforms or candidates. The only time they even really come up is when a high profile positions (namely the presidency) has only unpopular people running for it. That's not "no one votes for them;" that's "no one knows they even exist."
Yeah, Johnson got screwed here. The odds Donald J. Trump knew where Aleppo was (before all this) are approximately zero percent, but instead Matt Lauer asks him if he's "ready to be President".
Still, politics are unfair. At the end of the day what matters is that this is the first time Johnson has gotten real mainstream media coverage, so a fair number of voters have been introduced to him as Mr. What's-Aleppo Guy. Bye-bye Johnson.
I don't think it will do him any favors, but I think it will be easier for him to recover from this particular gaffe because it turns out Gary Johnson's gaffe introduced a significant part of the US population to Aleppo who had no idea what or where it was either, including media sources reporting on the gaffe, the general public googling Aleppo...
Many people who believe Nader spoiled the election miss two critical factors that were beyond Nader's sphere of influence:
1. About 12% of Democrats in Florida voted for Bush. That is roughly equivalent to over 200,000 votes, FAR more than Nader's total in Florida. If even just 1% of that group votes for Gore, he wins Florida.
2. Al Gore failed to win his home state of Tennessee, which was won by Bill Clinton in the last two elections. If Gore won Tennessee, the election would be over right then and there.
New. Hampshire. Not. Florida. That's where Ralph Nadar's influence shows the most.
Al Gore was a weak candidate. Ralph Nadar would not have had nearly the influence he could have if Al Gore had been able to shore up the Democrat base away from the the Republicans and the Green Party. While there are many facets out of Ralph Nadar's campaign's control, there is at least one that wasn't. He shares the burden, not holds all the burden.
As far as Mr. Johnson in particular stands, the hard truth is that if you don't want Clinton to win, you are better off voting for Trump, and if you don't want Trump to win, you are better off voting for Clinton. If you don't want either to win, well, tough, because one of them is going to (and I don't like it either). Johnson's not even going to get enough ballots to serve as a visible and viable protest vote. You might as well have just stayed home.
As someone who spent the past three months studying the Green Party before settling on Clinton, I can say the following two statements:
1. This argument is currently true.
2. The bar for the argument to be proven false is much lower than the post implies.
We all know where this is going: Ralph Nadar was a spoiler in 2000. You just have to know where to look.
First, let's get the most obvious thing out of the way. Al Gore lost Florida by less than a thousand votes, leading to a final score of Bush 271 to Gore 266. However, Florida was a giant mess to begin with and to be honest, there's a much quieter example that I found just by chance: New Hampshire.
Here are the following relevant numbers:
Bush won New Hampshire by 1.27%. Bush had 273,559 votes. Gore had 266,348 votes. Nadar had 22,198 votes. The rest of the Northeast was blue. New Hampshire itself has been blue in every election since 1992 sans 2000, and it's not unrealistic to think that ~8,000 people would have opted for Al Gore instead of Nadar had he not made the ballot, which would have shifted the score to Gore 270 v. Bush 267, thus altering the course of history. (Source)
What this tells me is that first a protest vote may not make much of a difference nationally, but regionally it can create a cascading effect. Second, if your protest vote does become important enough to get noticed (Nadar's National Vote was just under 3%, so that threshold can be small depending on the circumstances), then also depending on the circumstances, no one may care because they're too busy freaking out the other guy just won.
I know. That's why I tacked on the "even worse primary pool." I glanced at a Green primary debate that was on RT awhile ago and Samantha Bee covered the Libertarian final debate which was during their National convention. I was not that impressed by either.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
The reason I've been ignoring that rule is because this hasn't been a particularly standard election (even though really it has; it's just a remix of previous elections to look like something new and interesting). I'm still on edge about using it because FiveThirtyEight is still reporting 15% undecided voters (compared to 5% in 2012), but as this trend continues, the Greens and Libertarians are not looking to do much better this time around despite Democrats and Republicans not being so popular...
...Because both 3rd Parties picked lousy candidates from an even worse primary pool. The Libertarians may still hit their mark, but they're likely going to have to hit back on McMullin hard and soon.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
Actually, everyone outside the major two parties is doing better than 2012. All 3rd Party Candidates made less than 2% of the vote in 2012. This time, that may be Jill Stein alone, and there's an abnormally large group of undecided voters compared to the previous cycle. And on top of that, Gary Johnson is still on track to get the Libertarian Party federal funding for the 2020 election, although that's not a comfortable certainty anymore.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
Part of the issue that came of The Reform Party is Ross Perot ran it as the Ross Perot Ego hour, and it ultimately collapsed on that schism because political parties cannot function as an extension of one person *hint, hint Trump*. Honestly their best hope is to run Bill Weld as their president next time and hope he can
poachpick a decent running mate now that Gary Johnson basically gaffed himself out of the election. But yeah, there are factions within the Libertarian Party, and the faction that ran Gary Johnson (pre-getting an entire form of political gaffe named after him) is the faction that's trying to get the Libertarian Party to gain a larger stage.candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
You're making a huge assumption that people know 3rd Parties are extremist or have alienating viewpoints. That may be the case for you, to a lesser extent me, and a small part of the population, but in my experience, when I've dropped the phrase "Green Party," people are generally familiar with the names Ralph Nader or Jill Stein, and about the Party themselves they think either spoiler effect, "who?", and/or vaccines, which is not coincidentally the only issue oriented headline Jill Stein made in multiple sources around the time of the conventions when Bernie Sanders was making his switch to Hillary Clinton. There's so many more things to (dis)agree with the party on, yet they don't come up. Why? I say because they're not reported. Some people go out looking for all their options. Some people don't and stick with what's presented to them. You and I fall into the former, and you are disregarding the latter while what I'm saying is the latter is much bigger than you are giving it credit for, even if with the Green Party the current result of both is the same (the vast majority vote for Democrats instead).
And as a fun aside, I talked to our State Democrats about the State Green Party, and they don't think our State Green Party is either extreme and only mildly alienating. In fact, since I live in a Red State, about half the time two Parties are in complete cooperation because there is a host of issues they both agree they either of them could handle better than Republicans. It was described to me as a Bernie v. Hillary kind of thing: tense, yet good sportsmanship as opposed to the toxic partisanship of Republicans v. Democrats. The criticism that my local Democrats levied was that the Green Party has no ground game and their staunch rejection of large donations (i.e. via unions or people with a stronger progressive vision) is starving their organizing efforts.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
You're putting the cart before the horse. A good chunk of the reason no one votes for 3rd Party candidates is because of the stigma label "3rd Party." Many people don't ever go past that phrase to even learn about platforms or candidates. The only time they even really come up is when a high profile positions (namely the presidency) has only unpopular people running for it. That's not "no one votes for them;" that's "no one knows they even exist."
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
I don't think it will do him any favors, but I think it will be easier for him to recover from this particular gaffe because it turns out Gary Johnson's gaffe introduced a significant part of the US population to Aleppo who had no idea what or where it was either, including media sources reporting on the gaffe, the general public googling Aleppo...
...and me.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
New. Hampshire. Not. Florida. That's where Ralph Nadar's influence shows the most.
Al Gore was a weak candidate. Ralph Nadar would not have had nearly the influence he could have if Al Gore had been able to shore up the Democrat base away from the the Republicans and the Green Party. While there are many facets out of Ralph Nadar's campaign's control, there is at least one that wasn't. He shares the burden, not holds all the burden.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
As someone who spent the past three months studying the Green Party before settling on Clinton, I can say the following two statements:
1. This argument is currently true.
2. The bar for the argument to be proven false is much lower than the post implies.
We all know where this is going: Ralph Nadar was a spoiler in 2000. You just have to know where to look.
First, let's get the most obvious thing out of the way. Al Gore lost Florida by less than a thousand votes, leading to a final score of Bush 271 to Gore 266. However, Florida was a giant mess to begin with and to be honest, there's a much quieter example that I found just by chance: New Hampshire.
Here are the following relevant numbers:
Bush won New Hampshire by 1.27%. Bush had 273,559 votes. Gore had 266,348 votes. Nadar had 22,198 votes. The rest of the Northeast was blue. New Hampshire itself has been blue in every election since 1992 sans 2000, and it's not unrealistic to think that ~8,000 people would have opted for Al Gore instead of Nadar had he not made the ballot, which would have shifted the score to Gore 270 v. Bush 267, thus altering the course of history. (Source)
What this tells me is that first a protest vote may not make much of a difference nationally, but regionally it can create a cascading effect. Second, if your protest vote does become important enough to get noticed (Nadar's National Vote was just under 3%, so that threshold can be small depending on the circumstances), then also depending on the circumstances, no one may care because they're too busy freaking out the other guy just won.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~