And would it be a good idea? Lets say the actual DNC or a Super-PAC. if the money has been donated to elect Hillary, but actually they determine that one of the best ways to do that would be to fund Gary Johnson with say $100 million in key battle ground states. (Lets assume they have good polling data to show that he will steal far more votes from Trump than from Clinton in those states)
In theory the GOP / RNC could retaliate by funding Stein, but seems like she’s a lot less likely to get traction.
Unfortunately there’s a lot of Republicans who don’t support Trump but cannot bring themselves to vote for any Democrat. And since the US is a first past the post system, strategically supporting minor parties who suck votes from opponents would seem to be a valid tactic (if it’s legal which is what I’m asking)
Sucks to be them, you mean. They’re part of the problem. Suggesting that the DNC should give legitimacy to a republican-lite so that Republicans can feel better about not voting for her is … not well-thought out.
Funding a spoiler candidate is both underhanded and ill-conceived, as it could potentially backfire and result in people voting Johnson who would otherwise have voted Clinton.
So lets say its two weeks before election day, Trump is 2 points ahead of Clinton in the polls. Polling data shows potential Johnson supporters split 70 percent Republican / 30 percent Dem. If it made the difference between a Trump presidency or not you still wouldn’t support it?
The DNC’s job is to elect the Democratic candidate. If the Democractic candidate is behind, then they need to spend the money on the Democractic campaign. Giving that money to a third party in order to convince non-Democrats to vote for the non-Democratic candidate in the unsupported hope that it will cause more damage to their opponent than it will to themselves is a losing proposition.
They’d be better off using that money and hiring a nationwide fleet of uber drivers.
Something like this happened in Maine’s last gubernatorial election. It was a three way race between Mike Michaud (D), Eliot Cutler (I) , and Paul Lepage ®. The tea party and GOP donated a lot of money to Cutler. The plan worked. Liberals split their vote, and Lepage got reelected.
If that was truly the only way to ensure Trump didn’t win, then I would support it.
However in the real world, there would be much better ways to use the money to prevent Trump winning. I would put a lot of money into the get out the vote effort like Merneith says. I’d spend a good amount on ads for Hillary, and lots of ads for further down the ticket, so even those Democrats and Independents not super into Hillary will still want to go out and vote. I’d also have lots of negative ads against Trump to help ensure that more Republicans second guess voting for him. I’d blanket the airwaves with his highlights from his campaign over the last year, and people would be annoyed, but when they’re in the voting booth there will be at least one thing he said or did that will really bother them that they won’t be able to get out of their minds.
Also, it seems that if it got out that the DNC was supporting Gary Johnson, that could very well backfire. More than a few people might see it as being manipulated and resent it and vote for Trump out of spite.
Besides whether it could be done legally and without bad publicity (the latter is essentially impossible, it would be leaked and look bad) I question the premise Johnson takes significant net votes from Trump. There aren’t recent three way (Johnson but not Stein) national polls but for example three recent polls in FL include 2 and 3 way, Quinnipiac, NBC/WSJ and JMC , and all gave the same margin (one showed Clinton up the other two Trump) in a two or three way race.
Per Nate Silver, the average effect of Johnson and Stein across all polls is ~1% against Clinton. It might seem to some people that would be explained by Stein hurting Clinton by >1% and Johnson hurting Trump, but that’s not actually clear AFAICT. It might be more like 1% net effect of Stein, and ~0% net effect of Johnson.
It seems a very shaky foundation anyway on which to start thinking about a politically risky (bad publicity) effort to boost Johnson as a bank shot to help Clinton.
A good place to start would be historical precedent. I believe that there was Republican assistance, in many states, getting Nader and the Greens (good band name?) on the ballot in 2000. That seemed to work out OK (for them anyway).
On the other hand, Coremelt, there’s nothing wrong with you telling disaffected Republicans that they have an alternative: two Republican governors who are fiscally conservative and socially liberal running under the Libertarian banner.
The only place I think something like this would be the least bit workable would be Utah. Here’s how it would work in theory.
Word is somehow leaked that Democrats in Utah should vote Johnson.
Romney endorses Johnson.
Johnson wins Utah.
If all the Clinton supporters voted for Johnson in Utah, that might be enough to take Utah away from Trump. The thing is that I have no idea how the Clinton campaign would be able to undertake such a strategy.
Per the hypothetical, assuming they believed it would help get her elected, based on my understanding, I don’t see what would be illegal about a pro-Democratic SuperPAC making pro-Johnson material, provided that there was no coordination between that SuperPAC and Clinton, Johnson, or either the Democratic or Libertarian parties.
Now, as others have gotten into, I have issues with the hypothetical itself. From my own, admittedly limited experience, those who would typically vote Democratic but are turned off by Hillary for whatever reason pretty much hated Trump by virtue of their general Democratic leanings. Similarly, those who would normally vote Republican and are turned off by Trump for whatever reason were already turned off by Hillary and are as unlikely to vote for her. So, really, it seems like many of the people likely to vote for Johnson out of disgust for their own party’s candidates were more likely to just stay home than anything, and convincing them to vote third party is more me convincing them that, rather than staying home, they can send a better message by voting third party for the candidate that best represents their views. It seems to me that if someone is really turned off by their candidate but is scared enough by the other party’s candidate that they’ll hold their nose and vote, they seem even more resistant to “throwing their vote away”.
So, frankly, it seems to me that part of the reason that Johnson is polling well, aside from whoever would already vote Libertarian and whatever other growth the party might have or Johnson or Weld might bring on their own, that most of the rest is just those people who weren’t really going to support either party anyway. I think it only “hurts” Clinton more in polls because of how they’re set up. Using myself as an example, if I HAD to pick between Clinton and Trump, I have a preference, not in the sense of I like this one better, more in the sense of I hate that one slightly less, so in such a poll I’d answer that candidate. If you give me a poll with more options, I’d answer it differently.
And I think that’s why, as a result, it hurts Clinton more, the disaffected Bernie voters seem to me to be a larger contingent than the Never Trump camp. But, then again, actually being in the booth, that’s where we’ll really see if people will follow through with their intentions to really vote third party or their fear of the other party’s candidate will win out.
I agree that Utah is the one state that would be relatively easy to turn to another Republican. But so what? Suppose that, with Utah lost to Trump, neither nominee gets 270 electoral votes. Do you think the House would put Johnson in the White House instead of Trump? I like to think they’d have enough self-respect to do that, but I doubt it would happen.
There are probably some states where a big-money Johnson effort could move the state from Trump’s column to Hillary’s. And some states where such an effort would move it from Hillary’s column to Trump’s. Perhaps selective efforts (pushing Johnson in the former group of states but not the latter) would be the way to go. Hillary is expected to have far more money at her disposal than Trump, right? Maybe this would be a smart way to take advantage.
To hell with any made-up rules about “fair play.” The stakes are much MUCH too high for that.
This thread is about trying to encourage vote splitting on the Right.