Johnson has polls of around 10% right now. This is more than the margin between Clinton and Trump. I don’t think he can win, but he could probably ruin Trump.
Of course, the wildcard here is Jill Stein. She could do the same thing to Hillary. Is this going to be an unpredictable four-way race?
No.
No, there will be only two serious runners, Trump and Hillary, and Trump will win. With a rare genius for defeat the Democrats chose the one person in America who was more repulsive than Donald Trump.
Anyway, such a scenario would favour Donald as much as she since many libertarians who loathe Trump are now prepared to vote Hillary. Their positions are safer with her than with him. But there are not enough libertarians to throw it her way.
Also no but I will add … most of those saying Johnson will or would otherwise just stay home. Some (like our Addie) would vote Clinton over Trump and still will if they think it is close in their state.
No, Clinton would beat Trump handily regardless of whether there were any third-party candidates on the ballot at all.
That’s a pretty ridiculous way to look at it, basically the opposite of reality. Clinton has been the heir apparent for years and the Republicans decided to choose about the only person disliked as much or more than her.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/poll-election-2016-shapes-up-as-a-contest-of-negatives/2016/05/21/8d4ccfd6-1ed3-11e6-b6e0-c53b7ef63b45_story.html
Trump is perfectly capable of throwing the election to Clinton all by himself (unless he comes down with a five-month case of laryngitis). Johnson might fatten Clinton’s victory margin a bit, and perhaps do well enough to improve the Libertarian Party’s general standing and thereby cause future headaches for Republicans in actual close races.
Not a bit. Libertarians suffer from delusions of significance. Hillary will win in a cakewalk, perhaps even giving Democratic electors in SC, TX, and UT a chance to do their thing.
You are the first, and so far only, person who I have ever heard predict a Trump victory (Other than Trump himself) While such an outcome would be a disaster, I don’t yet hold such a dim view of a majority of my fellow Americans to think there is any chance.
Yeah…at this point, I’m not 100% sure that Trump is even going to make it past the convention. Between the fine job he’s doing alienating (even) the Republican establishment with his highly mature and politically savvy tweets and the job that the press is (finally) doing at reporting on some of Trump’s business “successes”, it hasn’t been a great week for The Donald.
He can charade stupid and mean.
Trump extends index finger: “First word!”
Trump places two fingers on forearm: “Two syllables!”
Trump extends index finger, points to self: “Asshole!”
Gary Johnson couldn’t throw his ass into a hole in the ground.
I have heard one realistic prediction for the Libertarians. Trump might tank so badly that the Libertarians could gain enough protest votes to reach the five percent plateau and qualify for a Presidential Election Campaign Fund’s grant. I won’t say it’s probable but I will concede it’s possible the Libertarians will reach five percent.
Absolutely possible. Trump angst appears to be spreading among the GOP and he could easily lose enough votes to give the LP 5%, which might give them funding for an election cycle.
Part of me really wants to agree with you, but I don’t think this week is bad by Trump standards. Any other politician would be done for, but they would also have been sunk by the Mexico wall, the Muslim travel ban, criticizing Fiorina’s face, bitching about debate rules, talking about Meghan Kelly’s bloody whatever… there’s just a big chunk of the electorate that has decided to not care about these things.
No, because the people who want to abandon Trump are conservatives, especially social conservatives. Johnson and Weld are liberals who offer those people nothing.
A big chunk but not a majority. Trump doesn’t seem to realize he needs to be winning over voters to his side not alienating everyone outside of his base.
But I don’t think anyone outside of the truly delusional think Johnson is going to win the election. So I think a lot of conservatives might vote for Johnson as a way of registering their dislike of Trump without having to vote for Clinton.
Trump’s performance the past three weeks has been so disastrous I am beginning to feel cautiously confident about Hillary’s chances. I was thinking that we would see a modified Trump, but he is who he is. I think a lot of independents and Bernistas will say they aren’t voting for Hillary now, but as the election gets closer and the media starts focusing more on Trump, I think it will be painfully clear how utterly unqualified he is for office. You have to have a pathological love of guns and a paranoia of the left, to convince yourself that not voting against Trump isn’t a waste of your civic responsibility.