I’d been getting increasingly annoyed at the “Third Party Vote is a Vote for Trump!” rhetoric particularly because I was always seeing it shouted at people who do not live in Swing States and can, therefore, vote for whomsoever they damn well please without having any effect on the outcome of the Presidential race.
Yes, no doubt there are some left-leaning voters in Swing States who are refusing to vote for Hillary, but I don’t know any. Every left-leaning or centrist voter who I personally know who lives in a Swing State is voting for Hillary. My annoyance at the rhetoric comes from my personal experience with the rhetoric, and the times I’ve seen it shouted on social media just makes me think the shouters don’t understand how the Electoral College works.
But, with the latest rush of Republicans rescinding their endorsements for Trump, I wonder if “A Third Party Vote is a Vote for Hillary!” might prove to be the more true statement. Many of them are saying “I can’t vote for Hillary but I will NOT vote for Trump.”
Seems to me the chances of Hillary losing supporters who are more anti-Trump than they are pro-Hillary are far less than the chances of Trump losing supporters who are more anti-Hillary than they are pro-Trump. It seems all but assured that Trump will lose every Swing State but I am actually starting to believe there’s a chance that he may lose one or two (previously) reliably Red States.
If only half of Republican voters vote for Trump while the other half put in a Write-In candidate (or abstain from voting all together), how many Red States could Trump lose because of that? Arizona, possibly. Georgia? Alaska?
What percentage of Texas Republicans would be required to vote against Trump (while still not voting for Hillary) in order for Trump to lose Texas? (That’s a rhetorical question but if anyone can actually provide a plausible answer, that’s great too.)
I can’t talk to anything but the factualness of the initial claim.
I assume that the only reason you do not see “is a vote for Clinton” claims is because you do not have a significant number of high school friends and or family members whom are libertarians.
I see lots of those claims from the Gary Johnson camp. So I am mostly going to say that this is an issue of limited dataset size of your social circles or media sources.
I haven’t seen any polls on whether Johnson will actually draw votes from and hurt Hillary or The Donald worse. I presume the latter, since (a) many libertarians lean conservative, and (b) more Republicans are dissatisfied with Trump than Democrats are dissatisfied with Hillary.
(1) Memories of Florida 2000
(2) Most of the “I’m voting third party!” stuff seems to come from burned Sanders supporters (who presumably don’t like Trump). That’s my unscientific guess based on the amount of Johnson memes and article shares I see on social media and who is posting them.
Dutifully vote the straight party ticket, write in Mickey Mouse, stay home, whatever. If all roads lead to a president neither you nor your buddies want there’s not much point in getting worked up over it.
It works both ways. Either you’re a liberal who opposes Trump but can’t bring yourself to vote Clinton, or you’re a conservative who thinks it’s wrong to vote Trump but oppose Clinton. If you support the new “Trumpism,” chances are you are already voting Trump. As are those who think Trump is the lesser of two evils.
There just really aren’t people who think that Trump is the lesser of two evils but can’t bring themselves to vote for him. Or, at least, that’s the assumption by those who say that.
Here’s another vote that the OP is mostly seeing a sample size / sample bias issue.
Whether a third-party vote is effectively a vote for Clinton or for Trump depends on which way a swing state is slightly leaning now. In a 51/49 state those 3rd party votes coming from the 49% side aren’t game changers. Those coming from the 51% side may well be.
Here’s another factor that’s asymmetrical between the parties and supports the OP’s data and conclusion:
This election has the wildcard, as 2008 did, of lots of enthused people who haven’t traditionally actually bothered to, you know, actually vote. The difference being that this time the newly-enthused are Trump = R supporters, not Obama = D supporters.
As such the Ds are the folks worried about a November surprise caused by an unforecast surge in R turnout. So they’re the ones most concerned about this scenario:
Step 1) Potential D voters choose to vote 3rd party out of confidence that the Ds will win without their support.
Step 2) An unprecedented and unexpected large surge of newbie Trumpers causes a narrow D loss.
The R’s do NOT have the mirror-image problem.
To be sure, in some states, e.g. California, the risk is nil and such concerns are almost certainly overblown. In many other traditionally mostly-safe D states, not so much.
This last analysis made more sense a couple months ago when Trump was surging. This week while he’s flailing it seems pretty far-fetched. Not really.
The key thing to remember is those of us who spend a couple hours a *day *on real politics (not just listening to our chosen party mouthpiece) are reacting days or weeks faster than are the rank and file public. So this trend (or almost any other election-related trend) will be operative long after its factual basis has been mostly undermined.