The Nader Effect
Ralph Nader was on The Connection a couple of weeks ago, and even if you don't agree with him, you have say that an hour with him on the radio is interesting. He made a couple of points that I hadn't thought about.
1) He said that most of the polls this year say that his presence on the ballot actually hurts George Bush more than it hurts John Kerry. At first that seemed a little wrong, but sure enough, this meta-poll agrees, with Bush up by 3.1% over Kerry when Nader is on the ballot, but in head-to-head with Kerry, Bush is up by 3.7%. Of the six different polls that listed both the three-way and the head-to-head, two say Bush gets an advantage if Nader is not around, two say that Kerry gains ground, and two shows an even split. I found it interesting that in the FOX News poll and in the TIPP poll, Bush actually goes down when Nader is not on the ballot. When people have the option of voting for Nader, FOX says 49% will vote for Bush, but only 48% will if they do not have the option of Nader.
2) The other thing Nader said that struck me I don't have independent verification for, but it is interesting nonetheless. When asked if he felt guilty for luring Democrats away from Al Gore in 2000, Nader said that if you were concerned about Democrats defecting in 2000, then you should actually blame George Bush, since for every one registered Democrat that voted for Nader in 2000, there were ten registered Democrats who voted for George Bush. Actually I just found a George Will column and handful of blogs that cite 8 million registered Democrats who voted for Nader in 2000, including 250,000 in Florida. Nader got a total of 2.8 million votes and 97,488 in Florida.
1) He said that most of the polls this year say that his presence on the ballot actually hurts George Bush more than it hurts John Kerry. At first that seemed a little wrong, but sure enough, this meta-poll agrees, with Bush up by 3.1% over Kerry when Nader is on the ballot, but in head-to-head with Kerry, Bush is up by 3.7%. Of the six different polls that listed both the three-way and the head-to-head, two say Bush gets an advantage if Nader is not around, two say that Kerry gains ground, and two shows an even split. I found it interesting that in the FOX News poll and in the TIPP poll, Bush actually goes down when Nader is not on the ballot. When people have the option of voting for Nader, FOX says 49% will vote for Bush, but only 48% will if they do not have the option of Nader.
2) The other thing Nader said that struck me I don't have independent verification for, but it is interesting nonetheless. When asked if he felt guilty for luring Democrats away from Al Gore in 2000, Nader said that if you were concerned about Democrats defecting in 2000, then you should actually blame George Bush, since for every one registered Democrat that voted for Nader in 2000, there were ten registered Democrats who voted for George Bush. Actually I just found a George Will column and handful of blogs that cite 8 million registered Democrats who voted for Nader in 2000, including 250,000 in Florida. Nader got a total of 2.8 million votes and 97,488 in Florida.
1 Comments:
Funny thing is, most people believe that Nader took/takes votes from democrats inciting republican orgs to donate money and collect signatures for Nader, and democratic orgs to run ads against Nader and issue court challenges to his ballot access. The (republican) secretary of state of Florida put him on the ballot there in a rather underhanded way with a court challenge still pending.
That said, I think Nader draws mostly from the disaffected ("There's no difference between the two parties") folks who wouldn't have voted Gore even if he would have been their natural choice if made to choose between just Bush and Gore (without Nader they'd have voted Natural Law or something). This year I suspect Nader's draw from Bush votes is probably repubs disapointed in Bush looking for a 'protest vote'. Where's Perot/Bucannan when they need him?
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