Do the Math – Stay Home and 3rd Party Voters did NOT put Obama in the White House

2/24/2010 | Pan_Yan

[Pan_Yan]

Do the Math – Stay Home and 3^rd Party Voters did NOT put Obama in the White House

2004		2008
Total votes cast	122,267,553	Total votes cast	131,257,328
George Bush	62,040,610	Barack Obama	69,029,444
John F. Kerry	59,028,444	John McCain	59,934,814
3rd Party	1,186,482	3rd Party	1,845,892
Nuts*	538,761	Nuts*	920,965
3rd Party – Nuts*	647,721	3rd Party – Nuts*	924,927

Nuts* - Ralph Nader, Green Party, Socialist Party, Socialist Workers Party, Party for Socialism and Liberty

Obama – McCain         9,522,083

Bush – McCain            2,105,796

            Let’s look at that 3^rd party straw man. There was a 55% increase in 3^rd party votes from 2004 to 2008.  However, nuts* voting increased 71%.  Not-quite-as-nuts* voting (all 3^rd party minus nuts*) only went up 43% by comparison.  In 2004 3^rd parties made up 0.97% of the total vote.  In 2008 3^rd parties made up 1.406% an astounding increase of 0.436% of the total vote.

            If you take all the people who voted for Bush but did not vote for McCain (2,105,796), and add ALL third party voters including nuts* (1,845,892), you get 3,292,287 votes.  Subtract this total from Obama’s margin of victory over McCain and you have a deficit of 6,229,805 votes.  According to certain pundits and FReepers there are 6,229,805 politically active ‘Conservatives’ that did not vote in 2004, decided they could not in good conscience vote for McCain, and yet were not willing to vote for anyone but an (R).  That is almost an impossible leap of logic.  Manufacturing voters like that is the forte of ACORN, not conservatives.

            I have heard the argument that the percentage of registered Republicans who voted was down in 2008.  Well too bad.   If the chosen (R) candidate was such a loser that the thought of comrade Obama in the White House couldn’t inspire his own (R) party members to vote for him then the cause was hopeless from the start.  Open primaries, infighting and poorly run primary campaigns left us with a pitiful nominee.  McCain refused to fight.  He had no conservative ideas, no clear fiscal policy, voted for the wildly unpopular TARP, and would not mention William Ayers, Frank Marshall Davis or Jeremiah Wright.  He refused to defend President Bush’s marvelous job protecting America for eight years, chanted his ‘Wall Street Greed’ mantra endlessly and was more passionate about Cap n’ Trade than the Constitution.  In fact, the only thing he did better than his opponent was pick a running mate.  Enough people voted for McCain, or at least against Obama, that he got more votes than John F. Kerry.  But he was completely unable to inspire any Independents when up against the affirmative action messiah.

            In conclusion, without thousands of enablers in the media and all his Washington drinking buddies, John McCain couldn’t talk hippies into smoking dope.  Without Governor Palin to prop up his limp, flaccid and tired campaign John McCain’s presidential run would have been an epic Mondale-level fail.  For the record, since so many people seem to forget, Governor Palin was not on the ballot for President.  So unless you had some inside knowledge that God would smite John McCain dead on January 21, 2009 you voted for him to become Commander in Chief, not Palin.  Most of us took Ann Coulter’s advice, got drunk and voted for McCain.  But Conservatives who didn’t take that option were not responsible for Obama’s victory.  Juan McMaverick was.  In retrospect we should have all just gotten drunk.

[SoCalPol]

see post 13.
The same could be posted for other states

[Pan_Yan]

why did you post this?

Whenever there is a thread about third parties or not voting for RINOs a cliche of FReepers show up who insist that third party votes and people who refused to vote for McCain based on conservative principles cost him the election. The fact is that only McCain cost McCain the election.

I have the state by state numbers thrown into an Excel sheet, but haven't crunched all the third party comparisons yet. The states that matter, those that Obama flipped from red to blue, McCain got 191,446 less votes than Bush. However, in the same states Obama got 3,037,154 more votes than Kerry. Bush won those states by 1,844,784 votes. McCain lost them by 1,383,816 votes.

Obama brought in new voters. McCain did not. He did not lose the election because of conservatives staying home.

[Pan_Yan]

Okay. Are you trying to equate a state wide election in Oregon to a national Presidential election? There just might be some differences. I get your point, but I’m afraid I have no interest in studying Oregon state elections.

[AuntB]

“John McCain was a rotten candidate. The loss was completely his fault, not the fault of conservative voters.”

Some people would swallow ground glass before they’ll place the blame where it belongs. The RNC and John MCain.

[jeltz25]

It wasn’t so much suburban women. White women went for McCain 53-46, a slight decrease from the 55-44 that they went for Bush by in 2004. It was also a bigger increase over the 49-48 that they went for Bush by in 2000 vs Gore.

I think it’s pretty obvious what kept McCain’s #s high among white women.

Where Obama cleaned up was in getting 100% of black women and near 100% of hispanic women, and I don’t think most of those are suburban.

[jeltz25]

Well, you really have to go on a state by state basis.

Obama totally destroyed McCain in CA, NY, IL, MA but they had no bearing on the outcome of the election.

Take IN and NC for example, 2 states thta were both decided by less than 1/2 of 1%. You think that a few conservatives staying home or voting 3rd party didn’t make a difference?

In IN Obama won by roughly 30,000 votes. Bob Barr got roughly 30,000 votes. Add in some folks who stayed home.

In NC Obama won by roughly 14,000 votes. Barr got roughly 26,000 votes.

In other states like OH and FL there were a large # of people who voted Bush in 2004 who stayed home or flipped. Of course, W’s 20% approval rating in those staes played a big part in that, it wasn’t just McCain.

[Antonello]

...and you have a deficit of 6,229,805 votes....

I could be wrong, but I didn't think the presidential election was decided by the popular vote.

By my reckoning, Obama won by 987,429 votes - the margins of Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Indiana, Ohio, and Colorado. All battleground states. All fairly close (the widest spread was Colorado at 9 points - North Carolina, worth 15 electoral votes was decided by less than 15,000 votes). All states that George W. Bush carried in 2004. All states that everyone who was paying attention knew McCain had to win. And all states that suffered from significantly lower than hoped for Republican turnout.

So yeah, California put 3.5 million more votes in Obama's column, and New York added on 2.1 million more, easily overwhelming McCain's 900,000 vote margin in Texas. But those states were forgone conclusions well before election day. It was in the close battleground states that a relatively small amount of voter erosion tilted the balance.

[NavyCanDo]

No, but the Third Party sure as hell got us Bill Clinton. Thank You Ross Perot.

Now Ron Paul the “Ernest T. Bass” of politics can go jump in a lake. His trumped up polls mean nothing.

[John Leland 1789]

“John McCain was a rotten candidate. The loss was completely his fault, not the fault of conservative voters.”

---

This is true! All we had to see is a couple of town hall meetings where voters who liked McCain stood and appealed from their hearts that he get serious and tough with Obama, and then McCain trying to waive them down and try to convince them that he had to be nice.

You can’t be nice with socialists and frauds. You must expose them directly forthrightly for what they are.

[AndyTheBear]

Remember: 82.6% of all statistics posted on an online board are pulled out of the poster’s butt.

And hopefully wiped with a sanitizer before they splat on to our monitors.

[AndyTheBear]

Indeed.

Refusing to call a fraud a fraud is just a passive way to enable it.