Gore lost Florida by .01% of the vote. Nader received 1.6% of the vote. Now this might seem that were it not for Nader, Gore would have won Florida. However, this is not necessarily true. Have there been any studies on what percent of the Nader voters would have voted for Gore if Nader had not run? Specifically, would the Nader voters have even voted if not for Nader running? What were Nader’s effects on voter participation? Is there any evidence that Nader attracted voters to the election process who ended up voting for Gore?
Sorry no cites. It was pretty well established that Gore was the second choice of Nader voters significantly more than was Bush. In addition, many of those Nader votes were by people confused by the butterfly ballots, who were mostly folks from Palm Beach, who were mostly democratic. As far as I know, there is little doubt that Gore would have won had Nader not been there.
The numbers vary, but well-cited polls have indicated that anywhere from 80 to 95% of Nader voters in 2000 “would not have voted otherwise.” It’s time to put this myth that Nader “took votes away” from anyone to rest. Nader was successful at getting people excited enough to get out and vote who would otherwise have not cast a vote for either mainstream candidate.
Ok, assuming your numbers are correct…
2000 Election Results for President in Florida ( Source :
Bush – 2,909,176
Gore – 2,907,451
Nader – 96,837
So, take 5% of Nader’s total and we get 4,841. I find it exceedingly unlikely a person who would vote for Nader would have vote for Bush over Gore so new totals would look like this:
Gore – 2,912,292
Bush – 2,909,176
Gore would have won.
Apparently the Republican think so too…
I should note Gore would not only have won Florida but the overall Presidential race. ~1.8% of Nader voters moving to Gore’s column would have been all it took.
And he couldn’t even carry his home state of Tennessee.
I wish the Democrats had nominated a stronger candidate in 2000.
I really do.
There is no factual answer to this question. So, off to Great Debates.
DrMatrix - GQ Moderator
I believe the better standard is not what would have happened were he not on the ballot, but how Nader voters would have voted under a transferable or approval voting system. I find it remarkably hard to believe Nader voters are so incredibly displeased with democrats that they wouldn’t prefer to transfer their losing Nader vote to Gore, given that Nader didn’t win in such a proportion as to have still cost Gore the election.
I just wanted to stop by to say this: I hope that, if there is an October Surprise, it’s Nader withdrawing himself from candidacy a week before the election. Unfortunately it would be too late to get his name off the paper ballots, but maybe not too late to remove from him the electronic ones.
Actually Buchanan was the beneficiary of the stupid people in Palm Beach County, not Nader.
and in 2004 too.
This thread makes me feel like I’m having a flashback!
Anyhow,Nader supposedly has 1% right now.
Won’t be an issue as he isn’t on the ballot here.
I think it is undoubtably true that, all else being equal, Gore would have won if Nader were not on the ballot. On the other hand, since the election was so close, there are lots of other ways in which Gore would have won:
(1) If the butterfly ballot in Palm Beach County hadn’t been used.
(2) [Likely] If Florida hadn’t used a “felon list” with an error rate of apparently around 80% or more to scrub legal voters from the registration lists.
(3) If the districts in Florida that had used punch cards had used a system with a lower rate of disqualified ballots.
(4) Various ways in ways in which he had campaigned better.
And, so on. Almost anything that would have swung Florida only a few hundredths of 1% more votes in Gore’s direction would have won him the election. The direct Nader effect is one of the things but not the only one. (With the whole Nader thing, it is also a little difficult to gauge what sort of indirect effect Nader might have had, in terms of how he changed how Al Gore campaigned for example or even what sign this effect had. Some argue that Gore should have more strongly embraced populist themes earlier…And, without Nader in the race, there probably would have been even less chance that he would have done so.)
I’ve always wondered about this statement. Was it really all that possible for Gore to have taken Tenessee, even if he’d spent more time there? It seems like a pretty solid red state. I guess Gore was closer than Kerry is right now, but it still seems a bit like critisizing Bush for not taking the state he was born in- which is so blue he could probably spend his whole campaign there and not win it.
Genuinely curious. This idea seems to come up alot when Gore’s ‘loss’ is discussed, and it’s always seemed a bit off to me.
Gore cost Nader Florida.
We’ll have to wait until 2012 to see if John Edwards can win North Carolina.
We need either IRV (Instant Runoff Voting) or actual runoff elections. We need to see to it that we don’t put intp office “winners” who got less than 1/2 the votes. Just being the front runner should not be enough. If more than 1.2 the voters voted against you, how can you be a legitimate winner?
That state elected Gore four times to the House and three times to the Senate.
I don’t agree that they were stupid.
> The ballot was genuinely confusing.
> Many of the West Palm Beach voters were elderly – and many of them were being rushed, with poll workers telling them to hurry up and give the next person in line a chance.
> Voters who realized they’d marked the ballot incorrectly, and asked for a new ballot were, in many cases, not given one. FL law required that anyone who asked for a 2nd, or even a 3rd, ballot was to be given one – but in WPB, poll workers often refused to provide one. Some poll workers told voters, “just circle the vote you really mean.” This was bad advice. If you punched the holes for two candidates, your vote was tossed as a “double vote,” period. Nothing you wrote on the ballot would change that.
I forgot to mention that Clinton/Gore also took Tennessee in 1992 and 1996.
In fairness it should be said that Buchanan siphoned votes from Bush as well. Just as I cannot imagine a Nader voter choosing Bush over Gore (had Nader not been a choice likewise I cannot imagine a Buchanan voter choosing Gore over Bush. That said Buchanan had considerably less effect in this regard than Nader did.
IIRC Buchanan himself commented that the Palm Beach (I think it was Pam Beach) voting that saw him get a good number of votes had to be screwed up and that those most of those votes were likely meant for Gore. To me that is telling as one would expect Buchanan to not admit that as I would expect Buchanan rather see Bush win than Gore and his comment meant the reverse should have happened.