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The Impact of Prior Third Party Voters on the 2020 Election
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orangefan Online
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The Impact of Prior Third Party Voters on the 2020 Election
At the risk of starting a thread that will devolve into another discussion of voter fraud, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the impact of third party candidates on the 2020 Presidential Election.

First, a couple of factoids of interest: in the 2020 election, President Trump received 11 million more votes than he did in 2016. More importantly for this discussion, he received a higher percentage of the popular vote in 2020 than he did in 2016, 47.2% vs. 46.1%. Further, he received a higher percentage of the popular vote in four of the five states that flipped in 2020 from Republican to Democrat: Arizona, 49.1% in 2016 vs. 48.7% in 2016; Michigan, 47.9% in 2020 vs, 47.5% in 2016; Pennsylvania, 48.8% in 2020 vs. 48.2% in 2016; and Wisconsin, 48.9% in 2020 vs. 47.2% in 2016.

How is this mathematically possible? Simple, the number of voters choosing third party candidates in 2020 returned to an historically normal level. Indeed, the entire increase in percentage support for the Democratic candidate in 2020 could be fully explained by former voters for third party candidates if those voters broke strongly for Biden. This seems quite likely for the reasons discussed below.

Until 2016, in recent elections, third party candidates have not drawn significant support. In 2004, 0.95% of the electorate voted for third party candidates, in 2008, 1.42% did and in 2012, 1.74% did. However, in 2016, the percentage of voters choosing third party candidates jumped to 5.73%. in 2020, the number dropped to 1.7%. While the third party candidates may have done an unusually good job getting their messages out in 2016, a more plausible explanation is that voters were extremely dissatisfied with the major party candidates, particularly Hillary Clinton.

I attribute the increase in third party candidate support to Clinton’s weakness rather than Trump’s because Trump’s performance in 2016 was on par with other recent Republican candidates. It was only slightly worse than Romney’s in 2012 (46.1% vs 47.2%) and was slightly better than John McCain’s in 2008 (46.1% vs. 45.7%). However, the performances by Romney and McCain resulted in landslide losses in the Electoral College. The real change was Clinton’s substantial drop in support as compared to the support for President Obama (48.2% vs. 52.9% and 51.1% in 2008 and 2012 respectively). Indeed, this year’s result is almost identical to the 2012 election in terms of the percentage of votes cast for major and third party candidates.

It will be an interesting research project for some political scientist to measure more accurately the impact of 2016 third party voters returning to major party candidates on the 2020 Presidential Election. Given the relatively strong performance by President Trump as compared to other recent Republican candidates, including his own performance in 2016, it is reasonable to conclude that former third party voters played a significant role in changing the outcome of the election.
(This post was last modified: 11-25-2020 07:19 PM by orangefan.)
11-25-2020 03:57 PM
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Post: #2
RE: The Impact of Prior Third Party Voters on the 2020 Election
(11-25-2020 03:57 PM)orangefan Wrote:  At the risk of starting a thread that will devolve into another discussion of voter fraud, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the impact of third party candidates on the 2020 Presidential Election.

First, a couple of factoids of interest: in the 2020 election, President Trump received 11 million more votes than he did in 2016. More importantly for this discussion, he received a higher percentage of the popular vote in 2020 than he did in 2016, 47.2% vs. 46.1%. Further, he received a higher percentage of the popular vote in four of the five states that flipped in 2020 from Republican to Democrat: Arizona, 49.1% in 2016 vs. 48.7% in 2016; Michigan, 47.9% in 2020 vs, 47.5% in 2016; Pennsylvania, 48.8% in 2020 vs. 48.2% in 2016; and Wisconsin, 48.9% in 2020 vs. 47.2% in 2016.

How is this mathematically possible? Simple, the number of voters choosing third party candidates in 2020 returned to an historically normal level. Indeed, the entire increase in percentage support for the Democratic candidate in 2020 can be fully explained by former voters for third party candidates if those voters supported broke for Biden at a rate of 72% to 38%.

Until 2016, in recent elections, third party candidates have not drawn significant support. In 2004, 0.95% of the electorate voted for third party candidates, in 2008, 1.42% did and in 2012, 1.74% did. However, in 2016, the percentage of voters choosing third party candidates jumped to 5.73%. in 2020, the number dropped to 1.7%. While the third party candidates may have done an unusually good job getting their messages out in 2016, a more plausible explanation is that voters were extremely dissatisfied with the major party candidates, particularly Hillary Clinton.

I attribute the increase in third party candidate support to Clinton’s weakness rather than Trump’s because Trump’s performance in 2016 was on par with other recent Republican candidates. It was only slightly worse than Romney’s in 2012 (46.1% vs 47.2%) and was slightly better than John McCain’s in 2008 (46.1% vs. 45.7%). However, the performances by Romney and McCain resulted in landslide losses in the Electoral College. The real change was Clinton’s substantial drop in support as compared to the support for President Obama (48.2% vs. 52.9% and 51.1% in 2008 and 2012 respectively). Indeed, this year’s result is almost identical to the 2012 election in terms of the percentage of votes cast for major and third party candidates.

It will be an interesting research project for some political scientist to measure more accurately the impact of 2016 third party voters returning to major party candidates on the 2020 Presidential Election. Given the relatively strong performance by President Trump as compared to other recent Republican candidates, including his own performance in 2016, it is reasonable to conclude that former third party voters played a significant role in changing the outcome of the election.

Evan McMullin was entirely running due to dissatisfaction with Trump. Gary Johnson/Bill Weld were trying to take votes from Trump. As both were former Republican governors, they got interest from Republicans. Now Jill Stein probably got a lot of dissatisfied Democrats.
11-25-2020 04:08 PM
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RE: The Impact of Prior Third Party Voters on the 2020 Election
2016

The Libertarians got 3.28%
Green 1.07%
McMullin 0.54%
Others 0.84%

Over 157,000,000 votes now.

Not an easy search to get 3rd party counts for 2020. NYT/NPR etc. which just focus on the top two are mostly what you get.

Green was 0.2%. Libertarian about 1.2%.
(This post was last modified: 11-25-2020 04:34 PM by bullet.)
11-25-2020 04:29 PM
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RE: The Impact of Prior Third Party Voters on the 2020 Election
(11-25-2020 04:29 PM)bullet Wrote:  2016

The Libertarians got 3.28%
Green 1.07%
McMullin 0.54%
Others 0.84%

Over 157,000,000 votes now.

Not an easy search to get 3rd party counts for 2020. NYT/NPR etc. which just focus on the top two are mostly what you get.

Green was 0.2%. Libertarian about 1.2%.

Those are the same totals that are currently reported by the AP.

The raw total third party vote was 7,830,896 in 2016 and is currently at 2,682,421 for 2020. This decline explains about 20% of the raw increase in votes for major party candidates.

(11-25-2020 04:08 PM)bullet Wrote:  Evan McMullin was entirely running due to dissatisfaction with Trump. Gary Johnson/Bill Weld were trying to take votes from Trump. As both were former Republican governors, they got interest from Republicans. Now Jill Stein probably got a lot of dissatisfied Democrats.
Looking at Utah, where McMullin got a large percentage of his vote in 2016, Biden improved to 37% of the vote from Clinton's 27% in 2016, while Trump also improved from 46% to 58%. The Libertarian candidate held more of their percentage than nationally, dropping only from 3.5% to 2.5%, and the Green party lost 4,000 total votes, suggesting that the decline in voting for third party candidates there was primarily McMullin's absence, and that the division of his votes was a pretty close split between Trump and Biden slightly leaning for Trump.
(This post was last modified: 11-25-2020 05:33 PM by orangefan.)
11-25-2020 05:17 PM
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orangefan Online
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RE: The Impact of Prior Third Party Voters on the 2020 Election
https://morningconsult.com/2020/10/22/tr...s-polling/

Should have Googled this before I wrote my initial post. This article discusses preelection polling of 2016 third party voters and shows Biden led among those voters over Trump 53-21%, with the remainder committed to third party candidates or undecided. This poll appears to understate the actual percentage that ultimately voted for third party candidates. Adjusting for that, it still suggests that 2016 third party voters account for about 2.2 million of the 3 million vote increase the margin of Biden's popular vote victory as compared to Clinton's. This further implies that Biden won among the 20 million new voters who didn't participate in 2016 by a 52-48%, the same margin as the overall vote count of 51-47%.

[Image: 201021_2016-Third-Party-Voters_fullwidth.png]
(This post was last modified: 11-25-2020 06:08 PM by orangefan.)
11-25-2020 05:46 PM
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RE: The Impact of Prior Third Party Voters on the 2020 Election
I think the faction of never-Hilldogs was probably much larger than GOPs refusing to vote for Trump just because republicans being more pragmatic. I know a ton of dems my age that protest voted 3rd party over Hillary after the DNC screwed Bernie because they never fathomed Trump winning.

I think November 2016 was an eye opening experience for many of them.
11-25-2020 05:55 PM
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RE: The Impact of Prior Third Party Voters on the 2020 Election
In GA IF the 3rd party voters had stayed home, which is the argument they make when voting 3rd party, One of the two GA senate races would have went to GOP. Let's hope those 3rd party fools vote in January for GOP candidate since that candidate is closer to what they want than the socialist candidate running as a dimocrat.
11-25-2020 09:09 PM
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RE: The Impact of Prior Third Party Voters on the 2020 Election
This is why Biden won fair and square. There was no known 3rd party to actually interfered with people voting for Biden. In 2016, CNN gave town halls to Mullins, Stien and Johnson. So have Fox News and MSNBC and guess what? So many broke away from both parties where the 3rd party candidates were almost on every state's ballot. Split the votes from the 3rd parties which were more than 3, and the ones that stayed at home? You are seeing a lot of unifications for both parties. Biden's message was more on point on what the people are worried about, but Trump was only attacking and smearing conspiracy theories. A lot of people were turned off by that. Biden did get the moderate Republicans with a college degree while Trump got uneducated non-college blue collar workers. I think people want to be unified than the hate stuff from the Twitter Troll out of the White House.
11-25-2020 09:56 PM
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RE: The Impact of Prior Third Party Voters on the 2020 Election
(11-25-2020 09:09 PM)THE NC Herd Fan Wrote:  In GA IF the 3rd party voters had stayed home, which is the argument they make when voting 3rd party, One of the two GA senate races would have went to GOP. Let's hope those 3rd party fools vote in January for GOP candidate since that candidate is closer to what they want than the socialist candidate running as a dimocrat.
Georgia should adopt Maine’s Instant Runoff, so they don’t have to spend millions staging another round of voting.
11-27-2020 09:12 AM
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RE: The Impact of Prior Third Party Voters on the 2020 Election
Appropriate thread for effect of 3rd party candidates?

Green Party Candidate Jill Stein Won Groundbreaking Case in October — Gives Campaign Right to Examine Voting Machine Source Code

Quote:On October 30, 2020 2016 Green Party Candidate Jill Stein FINALLY won her groundbreaking case that gave her campaign the right to examine voting machine source code in Wisconsin.
11-27-2020 10:49 PM
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