# Did Nader really cost Gore Florida? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 15, 2004, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-nader-really-cost-gore-florida/269471 "2004-10-15T22:18:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2004, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-nader-really-cost-gore-florida/269471/21 "2004-10-16T03:51:32Z")
> [@Hazel](#): > > I don’t agree that they were stupid. The ballot was genuinely confusing. Could the [butterfly ballot](http://www.asktog.com/columns/042ButterflyBallot.html) have been any more clear? There were arrows pointing right at the correct holes to punch. ---
**Author:** ![Hazel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e56c9b/32.png) [@Hazel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hazel)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2004, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-nader-really-cost-gore-florida/269471/22 "2004-10-16T03:54:22Z")
> [@WaryEri](#): > > 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. I can’t provide cites, but I do remember seeing, in the years since the 2000 election, a few articles theorizing about this. First theory: Gore lost TN on the gun issue. Pro gun rights people in TN decided that Bush was more “gun rights friendly”. Second theory: In TN, the GOPs, using FL-style techniques, were succesfull in disenfranchizing enough black voters to tip the election to their guy. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2004, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-nader-really-cost-gore-florida/269471/23 "2004-10-16T04:04:46Z")
> [@Walloon](#): > > Could the [butterfly ballot](http://www.asktog.com/columns/042ButterflyBallot.html) have been any more clear? There were arrows pointing right at the correct holes to punch. Not as clear as you think. > [@](#): > > Voters complained they were confused by a ballot in which the names of the 10 presidential candidates alternated on two pages. They expected Bush and Gore to be the first two choices as required by Florida statute but instead found Buchanan, on a facing page, nestled between them. > > The result: People said they voted for Buchanan, then tried to correct their mistake by voting for Gore. Others said they voted for either Buchanan or McReynolds thinking the ballot allowed them to vote for both president and vice president. > > Many were Jewish retirees in southern Palm Beach County thrilled by the chance to vote for a Jewish vice presidential candidate, Gore’s running mate, Sen. Joe Lieberman. Instead, they voted for the right-leaning Buchanan, whom many Jewish voters consider to be anti-Semitic, or the left-leaning McReynolds, an obscure candidate who received 308 votes in Palm Beach County, almost half his statewide total of 622. > > Forty-six percent of the Gore-Buchanan over-votes came from precincts where the majority of voters were Democrats and 65 or older. Included in those numbers: In nine of the 10 precincts with the most Gore-Buchanan over-votes, the majority of voters were both Democratic and 65 or older. Eight of the 10 precincts were in south Palm Beach County. > > SOURCE: [Over-votes cost Gore the election in FL, By Joel Engelhardt and Scott McCabe, Palm Beach Post Staff Writers, Sunday, March 11, 2001](http://65.40.245.240/voxpop/palmpost.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2004, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-nader-really-cost-gore-florida/269471/24 "2004-10-16T04:11:19Z")
Bah…hit submit when I meant to preview. Regarding the Butterfly Ballot look at it thinking how we read in the US. Left page top to bottom then right page top to bottom. Reading down the left page Gore is the second choice but to vote for him you needed to punch the third hole. Also note that those cards can slide a bit up and down. I have noticed this while voting and pay attention to see that the arrows were lined up correctly. In many states the vote margin is so wide that these mistakes get washed out as they wouldn’t really matter but in Florida they did. For the sake of fairness it should be noted that that ballot was designed by a Democrat so here at least the was no GOP conspiracy…just a bad design. ---
**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2004, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-nader-really-cost-gore-florida/269471/25 "2004-10-16T04:19:03Z")
> [@Walloon](#): > > Could the [butterfly ballot](http://www.asktog.com/columns/042ButterflyBallot.html) have been any more clear? There were arrows pointing right at the correct holes to punch. I’d be delighted if we could keep the butterfly ballot this time around, only we make sure that King George is on the second line of the ballot, so that it will be _his_ 15 or 20 thousand ballots that are thrown out because they’re double-punched. ---
**Author:** ![Hazel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e56c9b/32.png) [@Hazel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hazel)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2004, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-nader-really-cost-gore-florida/269471/26 "2004-10-16T04:53:04Z")
> [@Walloon](#): > > Could the [butterfly ballot](http://www.asktog.com/columns/042ButterflyBallot.html) have been any more clear? There were arrows pointing right at the correct holes to punch. Two problems: 1. (Often mentioned) On the left page of the 2-facing-pages punch card ballot, the first name listed was Bush and the 2nd was Gore – but the 2nd HOLE was NOT Gore’s. The 2nd hole was Buchanan’s (whose name was on the right page). The 3rd hole, very counter-intuitively, was Gore’s. 2. (Seldom mentioned) The arrows were not plain, clear, bold arrows. They were wimpy, filigree things – just the sort of thing the eye will glide right past without grasping the meaning of. This bad design that cost Gore thousands of votes in an election he supposedly lost by 537 votes MAY have been just a well-intentioned error (“let’s spread the ballot over 2 pages so we can use a larger font.”). Or not. I seem to remember seeing reports that the woman who designed the ballot was a former Republican. Could she have been a mole? Also, this is an example of the need for better election rules. Under better rules, it would not have been possible to use a new ballot design without first TESTING it to see if ordinary voters would understand it. Under better rules, 1/2 the ballots would have listed the candidates in one order; 1/2 in another order. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2004, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-nader-really-cost-gore-florida/269471/27 "2004-10-16T04:58:55Z")
> [@WaryEri](#): > > 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 did very little campaigning in his home state - living in Knoxville, I don’t recall him coming to town _once_, while Bush did so at least two times. And yes, TN did elect him no less than five times in the house and the Senate. So he _was_ electable. ---
**Author:** ![Hazel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e56c9b/32.png) [@Hazel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hazel)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2004, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-nader-really-cost-gore-florida/269471/28 "2004-10-16T05:25:05Z")
…for the link to that REALLY good analysis of the butterfly ballot fiasco in FL in 2000. ---
**Author:** ![Crandolph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7cd45c/32.png) [@Crandolph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crandolph)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2004, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-nader-really-cost-gore-florida/269471/29 "2004-10-16T07:39:14Z")
Good lord, people! 1. If you believe the fanciful Katherine Harris numbers, there were MORE THAN 10 candidates who earned more than the 537 magical votes by which Bush supposedly beat Gore. The Socialist Workers Party candidate had more votes than that in FL. The Natural Law Party alone (who want to cause world peace to break out with “yogic fliers”) earned OVER 17,000 VOTES in FL in 2000. You may as well claim that Doug Henning “cost” Gore FL. 2. An estimated 240,000 REGISTERED DEMOCRATS voted for Bush in FL in 2000. Bush is expected to get about 9% of registered Dem votes in 2004; a similar % of Republicans is expected to vote for Kerry. Al Gore and the Dems cost Al Gore FL… and more than 30 other states. 3. No one “costs” anyone votes; they all have to be earned. Maybe if the DNC concentrated more on registering their traditional constituencies and fighting for them (instead of enacting “welfare reform” and passing NAFTA, etc) instead of banning actual lefties like Nader from the ballot they might win something for a change. 4. Kerry is costing Kerry FL (and a majority of the rest of the electoral college) in 2004. What will the lame excuse be this year? ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2004, 8:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-nader-really-cost-gore-florida/269471/30 "2004-10-16T08:01:06Z")
The best post in this thread, **Crandolph**! ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2004, 8:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-nader-really-cost-gore-florida/269471/31 "2004-10-16T08:23:09Z")
> [@Crandolph](#): > > 1. If you believe the fanciful Katherine Harris numbers, there were MORE THAN 10 candidates who earned more than the 537 magical votes by which Bush supposedly beat Gore. The Socialist Workers Party candidate had more votes than that in FL. The Natural Law Party alone (who want to cause world peace to break out with “yogic fliers”) earned OVER 17,000 VOTES in FL in 2000. You may as well claim that Doug Henning “cost” Gore FL. > > 2. An estimated 240,000 REGISTERED DEMOCRATS voted for Bush in FL in 2000. Bush is expected to get about 9% of registered Dem votes in 2004; a similar % of Republicans is expected to vote for Kerry. Al Gore and the Dems cost Al Gore FL… and more than 30 other states. > > 3. No one “costs” anyone votes; they all have to be earned. Maybe if the DNC concentrated more on registering their traditional constituencies and fighting for them (instead of enacting “welfare reform” and passing NAFTA, etc) instead of banning actual lefties like Nader from the ballot they might win something for a change. Have you bothered to read anything in this thread? It does not matter how many votes the Natural Law Party won. I’d like to see a cite for 240,000 registered Democrats voting for Bush in 2000 but since a similar number of registered Republicans voted for Gore (per what you said) that seems a wash to me. To the OP yes, someone “cost” both Gore and Bush votes. Nader cost Gore votes without a doubt. Buchanan cost Bush votes without a doubt. Normally the fringe candidates do not amount to much vote-wise and the election produces a clear winner no matter if you add the siphoned votes. Florida in 2000 was a different matter and I think if you read up you can see that it looks VERY likely that Nader took enough votes away from Gore to swing the election. We’re talking about 1,725 votes according to the official final tally being the difference. 1,725 out of ~6,000,000 state wide. 1,725 out of ~97,000 votes for Nader. Then consider rampant purging of the voter rolls of consistently liberal voters that the NAACP sued the state over (after the fact). Then consider The Butterfly Ballot fiasco in West Palm Beach that saw Jews voting for Buchanan. Even Buchanan said that the results there could not be right and barring him winning he would throw support to Bush WAY before Gore. There are many places where Gore could have made up the difference and then some and ALL evidence points to that. A sad comedy of errors converged making Gore lose Florida but I do not see ANY reading of what happened, given hindsight, as suggesting that all was as it should have been or that Bush would have won Florida in any circumstances except the bizarre turn of events we all witnessed. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2004, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-nader-really-cost-gore-florida/269471/32 "2004-10-16T11:52:02Z")
> [@Crandolph](#): > > You may as well claim that Doug Henning “cost” Gore FL. Might as well, yes. > [@](#): > > Al Gore and the Dems cost Al Gore FL… and more than 30 other states. This is true, but it would take an extreme amount of prejudice, and a willingness to ignore facts, to think that this is the only factor around which elections hinge. > [@](#): > > 1. No one “costs” anyone votes; they all have to be earned. Please read my first post. The voting system we use now is like single transferable vote with the first round of voting held in the court of public opinion. People don’t want to admit that because they think it is noble to vote for independents, that the one little hole they punch or one little box they check SENDS A MESSAGE. Please, if your message is that easy to send, don’t make such long posts! 😛 ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2004, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-nader-really-cost-gore-florida/269471/33 "2004-10-16T14:59:41Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > Florida in 2000 was a different matter and I think if you read up you can see that it looks VERY likely that Nader took enough votes away from Gore to swing the election. We’re talking about 1,725 votes according to the official final tally being the difference. [nitpick]Actually, I don’t think that was the final tally. I seem to vaguely recall the final being around 400 or 500. [This](http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0876793.html) site lists it as 537. That sounds vaguely like the number I remember.[/nitpick] ---
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2004, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-nader-really-cost-gore-florida/269471/34 "2004-10-16T15:11:55Z")
Am I the only one who believes that Nader is being overrepresented in the current polls. I can honestly see how people could say in 2000, “There is no difference…tweedledee/tweedledum.” Now, there will always be a few who say that in ANY election. NO major party candidate will ever be good enough for them. They’d be ripping apart Kucinich if he had the nomination. There are always some who love to fall on their sword. This year, I think the ABB crowd will hold their noses and vote for Kerry. This isn’t about the Green party getting matching funds. Nader stuck his thumb in the eye of the Democratic party in 2000. I see Nader at less than 1% in the battleground states. He may get up to 2% in solid Bush/Kerry states. As far as Florida 2000 goes, I can’t believe we’re doing this again. Can someone look me in the eye and tell me that if Nader wasn’t on the ballot, they believe that less than 537 Nader voters wouldn’t have voted for Gore? Nader cost Gore the election. What a legacy, Ralph. Thanks for the 4 years of Bush. I’m not sure what point you were trying to make. I won’t remember your years of consumer advocacy. I’ll remember you making a point to make a point and hurting the United States. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2004, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-nader-really-cost-gore-florida/269471/35 "2004-10-16T19:29:39Z")
> [@jshore](#): > > [nitpick]Actually, I don’t think that was the final tally. I seem to vaguely recall the final being around 400 or 500. [This](http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0876793.html) site lists it as 537. That sounds vaguely like the number I remember.[/nitpick] Thanks…I thought it was a bit closer than what I wrote too but the CNN site I linked to seemed to have a different opinion and I was not going to gainsay them. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2004, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-nader-really-cost-gore-florida/269471/36 "2004-10-16T19:31:59Z")
Sorry…I realized my link did not go right to the Florida results page at CNN. This link gets you to what I was looking at: [Florda Election Results at CNN](http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/results/FL/) ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2004, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-nader-really-cost-gore-florida/269471/37 "2004-10-16T19:53:16Z")
Yeah…That site is a bit confusing because the vote totals are clearly the ones before the recount and such. The “certified” result is the one that I believe was taken as official after the US Supreme Court ruling. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2004, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-nader-really-cost-gore-florida/269471/38 "2004-10-16T20:29:55Z")
> [@Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor](#): > > And he couldn’t even carry his home state of Tennessee. This is one of the stupiest statements I hear around this subject. Bush couldn’t even carry his home state of Massachusetts. So what? Gore hadn’t run in Tenn since long before voting patterns there had changed. In retrospect was very never likely that he or any Democrat would have won that state. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2004, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-nader-really-cost-gore-florida/269471/39 "2004-10-16T20:34:25Z")
> [@Walloon](#): > > I forgot to mention that Clinton/Gore also took Tennessee in 1992 and 1996. 1992 was the height of Ross Perot. 1996 was a blowout landslide for Clinton over Dole, plus Perot was a factor yet again ---
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2004, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-nader-really-cost-gore-florida/269471/40 "2004-10-16T20:42:53Z")
Gore might have been able to carry Tennessee. However, I think he decided to use his time and resources in other states that would be easier to carry. Also, no states surrounding Tennessee would have been likely Gore states. Bush and Kerry both want Nevada and Arizona and they are still toss ups. But, because of the low population density, small number of electoral votes and distance from other battleground states, neither Bush nor Kerry is spending a lot of time in those states. It is much easier to jump around the midwest being able to potentially hit 3 states in one day. Plus, most of these states have 20+ electoral votes. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-nader-really-cost-gore-florida/269471.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-nader-really-cost-gore-florida/269471.md?page=3)