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[DeathoftheEndless]

You know what happens when they get 5% right?

They get funding to lose more elections?

 

[L Thammy]

If you think Johnson voters would've defaulted to voting for Clinton instead of Trump, you don't know much about libertarians.

Yeah, I keep seeing this thing about "what if Johnson voters voted for Hillary" and I don't get it it. What if Trump voters voted for Hillary? That'd be good too.

 

[badblue]

I disagree. I think the odds of winning should be considered when voting.

In that case, why even bother having an election? In 2020 you guys can just run the odds at Vegas and pick who ever had better odds.

 

[Hickbilly Deluxe]

This election really is Gore 2.0, isn't it? People will be looking to blame everyone but the Hillary campaign for her losing for the next 20 years.

Hillary and her campaign blew the election, end of line. They half assed their efforts and it cost them key states. You can't put that on anyone but them.

 

[Aaronrules380]

I blame the people who didn't vote at all more than those who voted third party personally

 

[theignoramus]

What I dont like about blaming third party voters is the arrogant assumption that if they hadnt voted for a third party candidate they would've voted for either of the two main candidates. Michigan has 87,000 voters who refused to vote for a president, but voted all the way down the ballot.

 

[forrest]

I disagree. I think the odds of winning should be considered when voting.

By voting for someone who doesn't represent your pick for president, it immediately reduces your odds of winning to 0%

So I certainly think people who truly believe in a third party candidate are considering the odds of winning. If they vote for their candidate of choice then they increase their odds. if they don't, then they reduce them.

Isn't this fundamentally how voting works?

 

[Morrigan Stark]

They made the effort to go out and vote for the candidate they believed the most in and shouldn't be criticised just because they didn't vote tactically.

Of course they can be criticized, because the result is what matters... Tactical voting is living in reality.

Also, remember #basementdwellers

Huh? You mean the comment that Clinton made about Bernie supporters that was actually sympathetic and understanding of their concerns, that got twisted beyond recognition by Fox News propaganda to make her look bad?

You can't put that on anyone but them.

Because voters are not responsible adults capable of making rational decisions, so they are absolved of their responsibility? Fuck that.

 

[Timeaisis]

I just want to say this, now that all the dust has settled.

I got more vitriol and shame for voting for a third party candidate than I ever have expressing any other political opinion (and I have a few doozies) in my life. The desire to assign blame an entire segment of voters was damn strong, before and after the election. Not only is this morally and intellectually dishonest by those who attack third party voters, it also completely undermines the democratic system. "Get out and vote...as long as you vote for my candidate." Granted, I hate Trump. I would've voted for Clinton if it was just between two. I live in Texas and that shit wouldn't have mattered anyway.

Shit just riles my feathers. Maybe instead of alienating and berating third party voters try to win them over? Ever think about that shit? Huh?

 

[God Dayumm]

Here's an example.

http://www.newsweek.com/ignore-bernie-bros-hillary-clinton-469314

IGNORE THE BERNIE BROS, HILLARY



Also, remember #basementdwellers

Wow. And they say Trump is the supremacist

 

[Baki]

I blame the DNC.

Trump would've been destroyed by a candidate with reasonable likeability ratings.

 

[Mimir]

Maine just voted to start doing this, actually.

Sadly, Maine is doing ranked choice, which is better than first past the post, but has plenty of issues of it's own. Most importantly for this topic, it doesn't eliminate the spoiler effect. There's a reason many places that adopt IRV voting later repeal it. Approval voting or score voting would be much better.

 

[Melkezadek]

I blame the DNC.

Trump would've been destroyed by a candidate with reasonable likeability ratings.

I don't understand why people are acting like millions of people didn't vote for her. It wasn't just the DNC placing her there. People chose her.

When Bernie loses, it's everyone else's fault but his and his campaign. When Clinton loses, it's her/DNC's fault. People still can't see the double standard.

 

[bennywhatever]

I personally voted for Gary Johnson because I identify as a Libertarian more than a Republican or Democrat. I don't agree with all the principles of Libertarianism, but if you were to show a cliff-notes version of what each party currently stands for, I'd look at it and say "Yeah, I guess I'm libertarian."
So, I voted for my party. It wasn't stolen from Hillary or Trump.

I will say, though, if a Republican or Democratic candidate came around that blew me away, I'd probably jump ship to support them. That happened in this election - in Indiana's Governor race, Pence's inexperienced second-hand-man Eric Holcomb ran against a fantastic Dem candidate named John Gregg and a wacko Libertarian candidate named Rupert Boneham. I voted for Gregg and was super bummed when Holcomb beat him. I mean I can understand why Todd Young beat Evan Bayh in Indiana because Evan Bayh was a sleezebag that didn't even know his Indiana address. John Gregg was pretty awesome though and had nothing against him.

 

[Ziltoidia 9]

Yeah that shit wasn't happening, don't blame the third party people, blame the flops who voted for Trump

And the people that stayed home.

 

[Neoweee]

I blame the DNC.

Trump would've been destroyed by a candidate with reasonable likeability ratings.

Just like the Republican primaries?

I think the basic lesson to learn from this year is that Trump is actually a good candidate in some wildly un-intuitive way. Things that would be disqualifying in normal circumstances don't matter enough to keep him from winning the math he needs to advance.

 

[Rentahamster]

Huh? You mean the comment that Clinton made about Bernie supporters that was actually sympathetic and understanding of their concerns, that got twisted beyond recognition by Fox News propaganda to make her look bad?

Yes. That's not all that happened.

 

[iammeiam]

I will say, though, if a Republican or Democratic candidate came around that blew me away, I'd probably jump ship to support them. That happened in this election - in Indiana's Governor race, Pence's inexperienced second-hand-man Eric Holcomb ran against a fantastic Dem candidate named John Gregg and a wacko Libertarian candidate named Rupert Boneham. I voted for Gregg and was super bummed when Holcomb beat him.

I thought Rupert Boneham looked like a familiar name, and it's totally the guy from Survivor.

So, yep, that's crazy.

 

[Morrigan Stark]

Yes. That's not all that happened.

Enlighten me then?

 

[boingball]

If you tell a voter that he/she is only allowed to vote for Trump or Hillary most of those third party supporters would not have voted all.

In fact the best way for Clinton to win would have been to get all Democrats to vote for her. Why is it the fault of independents when she couldn't get her own party to vote for her?

This makes some good arguments for the Nader fallacy:
http://reason.com/blog/2016/08/03/ralph-nader-did-not-hand-2000-election
More Democrats voted for Bush than Nader got overall.

I wonder how many Democrats voted for Trump this time?



P.P.S.
I did not vote (since I am not american). I would vote Green since that party is the most aligned with my preferences (Libertarians are next, then there is a big gap before the Democrats come and another big gap before the Republicans are at the bottom), but I might have voted for Hillary in a battle ground state knowing that I would regret that vote for the next four years.

 

[Kettch]

That was an incumbent, too. That wasn't fresh-faced HOPE 2008 Obama. That was, compromising across the aisle, turns-out-drone-strikes-are-a-thing, leaving Guantanamo operating, deporting more people than any other president in history Obama. The Republicans put up a guy who lost two million votes compared to their last loser, and somehow that guy won?

What a fucking year.

Just one correction. Trump is only about 500k behind Romney now, and there's still a decent chance he passes that. Clinton will get most of the 30% of CA votes still estimated to be out, but that's a lot more Trump votes too.

 

[ryan13ts]

Everyone has their right to vote for whoever they want, but I honestly don't understand even bothering voting for 3rd party. The way our shitty system is set up, there's practically no chance of 3rd party winning an election, so it's almost a waste of votes in a way.

That said, it would be super interesting if by some unholy miracle a 3rd party candidate won one day, if only to see how it would effect the House.

 

[Stumpokapow]

I don't know. How the hell does a Green voter reconcile choosing Bush over Gore, let alone Trump over a Democrat? They are extreme lefties and over a third of them would have picked the right-wing candidate? That doesn't sound right.

So, like, intuitively what you're saying is true -- but in practice, it isn't. Either Green voters don't conceive of the Greens as extreme lefties, or they do but have a muddled understanding of what left means. In Herron and Lewis, far from finding that Green voters are the far left of the Democratic party opting not to vote Democratic, they find that some Green voters seem to be committed ideological moderates, and some Green voters are just lunatics voting seemingly incoherently.

http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/lewis/pdf/greenreform9.pdf

This is the Herron and Lewis paper. It's readable with limited statistical background. The paper is cool because basically it says "Instead of polling people and asking them how they're going to vote and trusting, them we'll look at how they actually voted". So they went and got millions of actual Florida votes. Then they found the people who voted for Nader and said "imagine they didn't vote for president at all, how do we think these people would have voted?" -- by looking at how they voted on other races, they could figure this out. If someone votes nothing but Democrats top to bottom and then votes Nader for president, we can probably assume they preferred Gore to Bush. But if someone votes nothing but Republicans top to bottom and then votes Nader for president, we can probably assume they preferred Bush to Gore. The Herron/Lewis paper is a little more sophisticated because it uses ideological scaling to make what I just described statistically rigorous, but that's the gist of it.

 

[Morrigan Stark]

So, like, intuitively what you're saying is true -- but in practice, it isn't. Either Green voters don't conceive of the Greens as extreme lefties, or they do but have a muddled understanding of what left means. In Herron and Lewis, far from finding that Green voters are the far left of the Democratic party opting not to vote Democratic, they find that some Green voters seem to be committed ideological moderates, and some Green voters are just lunatics voting seemingly incoherently.

http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/f...eenreform9.pdf

This is the Herron and Lewis paper. It's readable with limited statistical background. The paper is cool because basically it says "Instead of polling people and asking them how they're going to vote and trusting, them we'll look at how they actually voted". So they went and got millions of actual Florida votes. Then they found the people who voted for Nader and said "imagine they didn't vote for president at all, how do we think these people would have voted?" -- by looking at how they voted on other races, they could figure this out. If someone votes nothing but Democrats top to bottom and then votes Nader for president, we can probably assume they preferred Gore to Bush. But if someone votes nothing but Republicans top to bottom and then votes Nader for president, we can probably assume they preferred Bush to Gore. The Herron/Lewis paper is a little more sophisticated because it uses ideological scaling to make what I just described statistically rigorous, but that's the gist of it.

I see. So third party voters are mostly just voting as a "protest" vote and are not at all informed (or do not care) about platform or issues or anything like that.

I guess I really should not be surprised, lol.

 

[Stumpokapow]

I personally voted for Gary Johnson because I identify as a Libertarian more than a Republican or Democrat. I don't agree with all the principles of Libertarianism, but if you were to show a cliff-notes version of what each party currently stands for, I'd look at it and say "Yeah, I guess I'm libertarian."
So, I voted for my party. It wasn't stolen from Hillary or Trump.

When people say stolen, what they are talking about is more like... imagine a system where on November 8th, we voted for Johnson, Stein, Clinton, or Trump. And then on November 9th, we took whoever the top two vote getters were, and put them on the ballot. In this case, Clinton and Trump. Now you need to vote again, and because you voted for Johnson, and he's not on the ballot, you can't vote for him. One possibility is that you REALLY like Johnson and REALLY hate the two major candidates, and you wouldn't vote. But another possibility is that although you prefer Johnson to Clinton or Trump, you actually do have an opinion between Clinton and Trump. Of course our system is not a two-round majoritarian system. So this means if you're one of those type Bs who would vote in the second round, by voting for Johnson, you lose your ability to decide whether you like Trump or Clinton more. If you're saying you're a type A, fair enough, but a lot of people would be type Bs, hence the intrigue and need to view the votes as "stolen" from the major party candidates.

The same kind of modeling happens for people who don't vote. Maybe it's the case they truly don't care, in which case they are indifferent to the result. But maybe it's the case they do care, but didn't vote, in which case their choice not to vote marginally negatively impacted themselves.

I see. So third party voters are mostly just voting as a "protest" vote and are not at all informed (or do not care) about platform or issues or anything like that.

I guess I really should not be surprised, lol.

I think 60% is not nothing--clearly Greens draw more from Democrats than Republicans, but yeah it shouldn't be discounted the people for whom it's not clearly left-ideological and it's just that weird people make weird decisions.

 

[KRod-57]

Bingo

People also need to start trying to understand why people voted the way they did.. it's the only way we can make improvements

 

[jorma]

So, like, intuitively what you're saying is true -- but in practice, it isn't. Either Green voters don't conceive of the Greens as extreme lefties, or they do but have a muddled understanding of what left means. In Herron and Lewis, far from finding that Green voters are the far left of the Democratic party opting not to vote Democratic, they find that some Green voters seem to be committed ideological moderates, and some Green voters are just lunatics voting seemingly incoherently.

http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/lewis/pdf/greenreform9.pdf

This is the Herron and Lewis paper. It's readable with limited statistical background. The paper is cool because basically it says "Instead of polling people and asking them how they're going to vote and trusting, them we'll look at how they actually voted". So they went and got millions of actual Florida votes. Then they found the people who voted for Nader and said "imagine they didn't vote for president at all, how do we think these people would have voted?" -- by looking at how they voted on other races, they could figure this out. If someone votes nothing but Democrats top to bottom and then votes Nader for president, we can probably assume they preferred Gore to Bush. But if someone votes nothing but Republicans top to bottom and then votes Nader for president, we can probably assume they preferred Bush to Gore. The Herron/Lewis paper is a little more sophisticated because it uses ideological scaling to make what I just described statistically rigorous, but that's the gist of it.

If they voted Republican in all the other races but didn't vote Bush i would rather assume that they actually preferred Gore but couldn't bring themselves to vote democrat, and vice versa.

 

[Elaugaufein]

As a rule of thumb you can probably assume that given they were obliged/asked to express an opinion about 75%-80℅ of the Green vote would go Democrat before Republican. Maybe a bit more than that in this case since Trumps basically anethma to the Green vote.

I'd be wildly surprised if the Libertarian vote split was anything like that favourable, most US Libertarians lean Republican (hence Ron Paul) and since it's significantly larger than the Green vote was this election its probably more relevant. I'd be surprised if it was favorable to Democrats at all under normal circumstances but given that a lot of it was probably avoiding voting for Trump this go around it might have broken favourable.


Also people who support a FPTP voting system that disenfranchises third party voters don't get to complain about third party voters in the circumstances it blows up in their face. Thats the tradeoff the party was willing to make to consolidate its own power, they own it.

So, like, intuitively what you're saying is true -- but in practice, it isn't. Either Green voters don't conceive of the Greens as extreme lefties, or they do but have a muddled understanding of what left means. In Herron and Lewis, far from finding that Green voters are the far left of the Democratic party opting not to vote Democratic, they find that some Green voters seem to be committed ideological moderates, and some Green voters are just lunatics voting seemingly incoherently.

http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/lewis/pdf/greenreform9.pdf

This is the Herron and Lewis paper. It's readable with limited statistical background. The paper is cool because basically it says "Instead of polling people and asking them how they're going to vote and trusting, them we'll look at how they actually voted". So they went and got millions of actual Florida votes. Then they found the people who voted for Nader and said "imagine they didn't vote for president at all, how do we think these people would have voted?" -- by looking at how they voted on other races, they could figure this out. If someone votes nothing but Democrats top to bottom and then votes Nader for president, we can probably assume they preferred Gore to Bush. But if someone votes nothing but Republicans top to bottom and then votes Nader for president, we can probably assume they preferred Bush to Gore. The Herron/Lewis paper is a little more sophisticated because it uses ideological scaling to make what I just described statistically rigorous, but that's the gist of it.

Parts of the Third party vote are protest votes. They don't give a damn about the party or its positions beyond "not a major party". Also looking at regular polling in Australia about 3-7% of the Green vote are just deeply confused and/or trolling (there's always that percent that end up strongly opposed to fundamental Green policies like immediate action on Climate Change), its probably worse in the US where it's not a player at all and doesn't have an organised platform and proper national organisation (our Greens have sent people to work on the Democrats election campaigns before.)