[justiceseeker93]

Given the impact of the third party Nadar vote for the Bush election, I would like to see some analysis of the potential impact of the Libertarian Party, Green Party, and Goode and Rohmer third party vote probabilities.

I'll be shocked if the third parties combined will get anything more than 2% of the total national popular vote. That would be a generous estimate. And Nader's impact on the Bush election in 2000 was merely the result of a very unusually tight race in Florida: 500+ votes separating Bush and Gore out of more than 5 million total votes cast which happened to be decisive for Bush's margin in the electoral college. (It was not because of any unusual strength for Nader's Green Party candidacy.) The probability of a similar occurrence this year is very small.

That's why when you see a Ras poll indicating that 6% in a particular state (like Ohio this week) prefer a third party candidate, you can bet your farm that the majority of those third party people will either stay home or vote for one of the major candidates, with Romney getting more of their votes than Obama. Remember that some people who receive a robo-call from a pollster will prefer, because they are uncomfortable talking to an electronic voice about Obama, to wimp out and say they're undecided or are supporting another candidate.

Obama can't mathematically win re-election with only 45% of the popular vote. He won't be getting very much more from the segment of voters who are now telling a pollster that they are undecided or voting third party, certainly not enough to push him past Romney.

[Political Junkie Too]

And don't forget that if Gore had won his home state or Clinton's home state, Florida would not have mattered - making a 3rd party impact moot.

-PJ

[Impy]

I don’t know how Nader got over 2% 12 years ago but Obama/McLame got over 98% of the vote against an Indy Nader and 2 former members of Congress on the Green and Libertarian tickets.

So I don’t see Goode and Johnson making much difference. Johnson it seems takes pretty evenly from both and probably won’t be a factor outside his own state.

The only thing is Goode could hurt in his critical home state with just 1 or 2 points. I hope not. Bob Barr did very poorly in his home state of Georgia in 2008, less than 1%.

No Nader this time. I don’t know who the Greens have but the Roseanne Barr/Cindy Sheenhan ticket is on the Peace and Freedom ballot in Cali! So is a member of this site on the American Independent ballot.