There are all kinds of people making all kinds of polls responses which do or don’t correspond to how they will actually vote, if they even do vote. I think everyone might have a tendency to boil that down to voters like themselves or else some hypothetical voter the opposite of themselves. And thus oversimplify things.
However I basically agree. The premise that boosting Johnson hurts Trump more that it does Clinton is notably lacking in evidence.
And in a hypothetical boosting of Johnson it’s even more dubious IMO to be sure where those extra votes would come from. Right now Johnson has ~7% in the RCP avg of national 4 way polls (there aren’t recent national 3 ways). But by evidence of recent 3 way state polls the best estimate seems to be that around half of that comes from each of Trump and Clinton. How could anyone know that the next 8% (say to boost Johnson into the debates at 15%) would be more from Trump than Clinton? Just some image in their mind of ‘those other people’ (eg Republicans from a Democrat’s POV) it seems.
I think something like this could work in Colorado. Colorado has a strong libertarian vibe. If a super pac pumped up Johnson’s conservatism (smaller government, lower taxes, …) the result could be a boost in Johnson voters taken almost entirely from the Trump column. This could make a difference in swingy Colorado.
The thing about super pacs is that they don’t have to tell people where the money came from so if George Soros was writing the checks no one would know.
Yes, it is legal for a party organization to support an opponent, if it’s handled adroitly. I’m sure there are ways it can’t be done, but it can be done in some ways.
Here in San Diego, in the primaries for House of Representative, the Democratic Party publicly endorsed one of the Republican candidates, a lesser candidate who was less likely to win against his Republican opponent, but who would have been much less likely to win against the expected Democratic opponent.
(Rather as if, in 2000, Bush’s people had endorsed Nader, and comparable to what you suggest here.)
“Free speech” says that we can say, “Hooray for Candidate Jones,” even if we’re the ones who benefit from Jones’ success as it takes votes away from Candidate Smith. We’re totally insincere in our praise for him; it’s only a strategic gambit. But it’s speech, and nobody can silence it.
But again look at the starting point. Four relatively recent polls in CO (as given on RCP) have Trump/Clinton and Trump/Clinton/Johnson/(not Stein) versions. In NBC/WSJ Trump does 5 points better when including Johnson, Fox 1 point better, Monmouth equal, though in CBS/Yougov Trump does 1 point worse with Johnson than without. It’s weak evidence as a starting point that boosting Johnson in general would hurt Trump.
You propose to try to spin it a certain way to emphasize what you believe is the commonality of many Trump voters with Johnson, but again I think this oversimplifies. There are some conservatives all over, not just in the West generally or CO, who favor smaller govt and it’s not lost on them that Trump is a basically big government populist. Nor do they think Trump is a strict constitutionalist (as they like to see it). Then on to Trump’s low character. Now we’re really rolling…except it ignores that died in the wool constitutional small govt conservatives aren’t actually that numerous.
And a lot of them, and also a lot of people generally on the right not necessarily pure conservatives think illegal immigration is a serious problem (let’s not get bogged down in debating that perception, let alone calling them names). Johnson is firmly on the Democrats’ side on that issue. This IMO is the biggest flaw in the reasoning that says Trump is easily liable to lose a lot of support to Johnson.
Then there are plenty of relatively less ideological or less connected (to politics at all, but who might vote) people who are just picking Johnson because Trump and Clinton seem terrible to them. And some Bernie-or-Bust types (who might also pick Stein in a four way race, IOW in reality).
Overall Johnson seems to pull about evenly from Trump and Clinton, and I think it’s very speculative, not for sure at all, to say that could be changed to pulling almost all from Trump in any state.
This could split the vote in Utah, but even if it turns Utah Libertarian, I doubt it would hurt Clinton’s chances much: Utah has been solid Republican for so long Democrats don’t count on it, and neither of the projections (Princeton Election Consortium or FiveThirtyEight) show it as being seriously in play and both of them give Clinton the edge. Ultimately, however, the FiveThirtyEight forecast gives Johnson a whopping half an electoral vote, which both sounds about right for the Libertarian Party and isn’t enough to swing the election as a whole.
The LP could post banner numbers and it wouldn’t matter in the slightest. But it would be a Hell of a trip to see a doctrinaire Establishment GOP candidate endorse the Libertarian.
Recall the study that the single most clear-cut trait common to Trump supporters is authoritarianism. This trait is largely opposite to the traits defining libertarianism.
Of course it’s speculative. That’s why I started my post with, “I think…”
I believe there is a way to craft a pro-Johnson commercial that would appeal almost entirely to conservative voters. In fact I don’t believe it would be particularly difficult to do so. Whether or not this is the best way to spend advertising dollars is neither here nor there.
In theory, maybe, but in practice, Libertarianism is also associated with the Ayn Rand contingent who is willing to cozy up to an authoritarian as long as they’re a business mogul and not a government strongman.
Yes. And frankly if some third force wants to support the Libertarian Party, it should be the Koch brothers or any number of Never Trumpers. All Americans have an interest in not handing surveillance powers or the nuclear codes to Trump, whether you are a Libertarian, neoconservative or concerned citizen.