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To: Political Junkie Too; All

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.


3 posted on 08/19/2012 11:39:25 AM PDT by gleeaikin
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To: gleeaikin
I think the impact shows up in the totals. For example, in Ohio the vote is tied at 45%. Other candidates get 6%, and 4% are undecided. The candidates that you list would show up in that 6%.

Are you asking whether that 6% is coming from Romney's or Obama's total, or whether they would go to neither and the voter will just stay home, or whether they would still vote for the 3rd party candidate on election day?

Most people think that the undecided vote tends to break for the challenger, because if they supported the incumbent they'd already have made up their mind. Along those lines, one could surmise that the 3rd party vote is also a protest against the incumbent moreso than a refusal to support the challenger.

I use Rasmussen's public polling data, so I'm not diving (yet) into the details where 3rd party insights may lie. That said, I'm 100% certain that a 3rd party candidate will not win the Presidency.

-PJ

4 posted on 08/19/2012 11:52:43 AM PDT by Political Junkie Too ( It doesn't come naturally when you're not natural born.)
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To: gleeaikin; Political Junkie Too; SunkenCiv; randita; fieldmarshaldj; Impy; InterceptPoint; ...
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.

17 posted on 08/19/2012 5:13:35 PM PDT by justiceseeker93
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