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.
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.