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this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2024
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Why are Democrats afraid of a candidate stealing votes if the opposition party is doing worse with every election?
No one is “afraid” of Jill Stein. What they’re afraid of is a GOP and Russian misinformation campaign disguised as a third party presidential campaign causing chaos in an election with likely extremely close margins of victory.
The idea that anyone is afraid of Stein is hilarious by the way. The 74yr old perennial candidate whose only elected experience is partial representation of a district in a municipal legislature for a town of 30k people? Yeah, not a serious candidate - because if she was, you’d hear something from her in between pointless presidential campaigns.
It's sad that this has been repeatedly explained to this user, and yet without any substantive rebuttal, they persist without any evolution of their view.
Isn't that a bit... Odd? Perhaps suss? Weird?
They’re not asking the question in good faith, and it’s pretty obvious.
Look at the math.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/results-president.html
https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/results/president
Two last elections were won with 1 or 2 percent of certain states swinging one way or another. 1% of people voting Green in a swing state can absolutely hand the election to the fascists.
Greens and Libertarians heavily underperformed in those states relative to the national vote.
Folks who clung to those parties had no interest in voting except as a protest against the duopoly.
Thing is, research organizations have and do survey the public about this. A LOT of pollsters were surveying the public about RFK during this round.
A non-zero amount of 3rd party voters always say they’ll move toward Trump or Harris depending which 3rd party option falls off the pick list.
And when races are tight enough to be decided by a few hundred or a few thousand votes, a small non-zero amount of people can be the difference.
The biggest 3rd party margins are in states with firm single party majorities. Kicking RFK Jr has a very different consequence in California or Texas than Pennsylvania or Michigan.
It's easier to simply kick ideologically adjacent rivals off the ballot than broaden your base or improve your voter outreach.
The real problem democrats are having is that Jill Stein leads Kamala Harris with Muslims in these three battleground states. And the assumption is that if Stein simply surrenders to Harris and walks away from the campaign, those Muslim voters will collapse into the Democratic Party.
But the assumption fails to address why these communities are polling at historic numbers for an out-layer candidate. Was Stein a rhetorical mastermind who could rally hundreds or thousands of votes to her quixotic campaign? Or is there something about the current Dem administration that Muslims have a problem with?
If you click into the state by state results that I posted, the click in on swing states and view full results, you’ll see that some of the razor thin wins of the past would’ve flipped if a candidate got a hair of a 3rd party’s votes.
That’s why both the GOP and DNC have been worrying about 3rd parties this season.
Gerrymandering. Next question.
Spoiler Effect, too!
Gerrymandering only has to do with US Congressional House districts. Though I take it your point may be that the EC and Gerrymandering are propping up a dying party., which is absolutely true.
Bonus: Weevil ran away from a discussion we had when they tried to claim Democrats were blocking DC statehood because they, "didn't want a black state." when in fact it has always been Republicans to blame for blocking it. lmfaowtf360bbq.
Exactly. In a fair and independent contest, the concept of a "spoiler" wouldn't really exist. But given that the Presidency basically gets decided by a few million voters who live in swing states' contested districts, it turns out it's really easy for a niche candidate to derail the more likely ones just by trying to appeal specifically to them.
Nothing you can do about people like that shitting on your doorstep and running away other than to hose it down and hang up a sign that says "Please do not shit on porch". We live in a post-truth society.
Framing this as only a small group of voters in swing states is stupid. No candidate can win with just a few million votes scattered across a handful of states.
You are taking something very minor and turning it into a major problem. Its like saying Hilary would have won if not for the last minute news reports about her emails or whatever it was, when she lost because she didnt appeal widely enough to the american people, and carried an awful attitude while doing it.
You're not getting my point. I'm not saying someone can win with just a handful of voters from swing states, I'm saying that someone can stop another candidate from winning by courting those voters. Hence, a spoiler.
Sure that could happen, but then you never had those voters. At some point you have to lay the blame at the people who voted like this, if it happens.
This is like saying that getting a question wrong on a test can be the difference between pass and fail, and then picking a question at random and deciding to focus on that instead of the whole test.
You are right it could be enough people to match the difference in votes, but thats not the same as saying its essential we get that voter block no matter what. Theres a ton of things that make a difference, but its the collection of them that makes a candidate.
Your test analogy kind of proves the point, though. Say you have a 10 question test and 8 are very easy, and the last 2 are very difficult. In general, if you've done your homework, you should get most of the first 8. Whether or not you get a really good grade will depend more on the last 2. I think both parties are guilty of assuming they'll get the first 8 correct no problem, but there is a tactically sound reason to focus on the last 2.
I'd argue they focus too little on the first 8 and too much on the last 2. Both would be an error in analysis of course.
Also it runs the risk of people applying statistics to individual cases, or groups too small to be statistically relevant.
I agree with you - and that's why gerrymandering is a problem, because it makes the last 2 questions more valuable to study for. As for statistics, that's for pollsters and analysts to work on.
If everyone knows gerrymandering is bad, why is it still allowed to happen?
Because a good chunk of the population doesn't understand what it is and why it's bad, and a serious percentage of politicians benefit from it.
Are you saying its essentially a thing Republicans don't know about or understand? I have to assume every democrat has heard the word, and it has simple explanations too.
I was under the impression republicans knee but defended it but it could be an ignorance thing, thats a fair point.
Add in actual prevention of people to cast a vote. Voter ID laws, closing polling stations in specific areas, trying to prevent mail-in voting, actively protesting in voting areas to scare away voters.
Ohhhh this brings me back..
I'm not afraid of shit. Jill Stein has proven she's anti-science with her stances on GMOs and vaccines. She's proven she's politically illiterate and unfit for office by not being able to answer simple questions about our government. And she's proven she's a Russian asset by meeting with Putin officials and encouraging people to vote for Donald Trump.
Because the spoiler effect is the result of geometric proximity, not the strength of candidates.
Cool story bro.
Because doing worse doesn't mean they're not still an imminent threat to our democracy.
If the Greens are an imminent threat to democracy, your democracy is already dead.
Don't be obtuse.
There are 10x more non-voters than Green voters in any given election. If you abolish the Green Party, all you're doing is feeding those Green voters into the non-voting demographic.
Why would any Green vote for a party that believes their organization does not have a right to exist?
Don't be obtuse.
I guess maybe you're not being intentionally obtuse.
The comment was about why democrats worry about losing to the Republicans due the green party taking votes because the Republican party is weakening.
I was saying that the republican party weakening doesn't mean they aren't still a threat.
Ah, my mistake. I thought they were saying the Green party is weakening. Greens have been steadily losing vote share since Nader's defeat in 2000.
Idk why you were downvoted for admitting you were mistaken. The internet is weird.
What's your proof of this claim?
No party wants to lose voters. No company wants to lose customers. No house of worship wants to lose congregants. It’s that simple; I believe.
No billionaire wants to lose profits