One thing I don’t know the answer to is how cotes are counted when a candidate has support from multiple parties: say Hillary is the Democrat nominee and gets 45% in a state, and Trump is the nominee of the Republicans and also the Libertarians, and that he gets 40% as the Republican and 15% as the Libertarian. Would Hillary be deemed the winner as the candidate with the most support from a single party? Or would Trump be the winner as the candidate with the most support altogether? In other words, are votes for a candidate on multiple tickets aggregated?
Yes, they are aggregated. The Libertarians wouldn’t do it, though, without massive defections from their super-doctrinaire party. But maybe the Conservative Party of New York State would do it. They are less snooty than the Republicans, more working-class-oriented, and just might go for it. That would only give us New York State though, with that particular tactic.
The Conservative Party usually goes along with the Republicans. Makes sense usually. They won’t back a partial-birth-abortion candidate—that’s their red line, a sad statement on our culture, really. And one year they held their state convention earlier than the Republicans, which kind of forced the hand of the GOP.
In Connecticut you can run on someone else’s line, with their permission, but not on any other line, including your own party, at the same time. I think that’s about it for running on another party’s line.