Yesterday I wrote that the fundamental issue with this election was that Dems didnt show up. I got some feedback on some alternate reasons. One put forward both in the comments and elsewhere on this site was that men didnt want to vote for a woman as president. While that may be true, I don't think it in any way decided this election. Why? Because of Jill Stein. Lets see if Im right.
There is always a danger in assigning blame for an election to third party voters. Republicans still claim that Ross Perot is the reason Bill Clinton was elected despite tons of evidence that Perot took away votes almost equally with a likely slight bias toward traditional “Democratic” votes. On the other hand, its hard not to look at Ralph Nader votes in Florida and New Hampshire and think they cost Gore the election. With that in mind, lets look at Jill Stein.
Like Hillary, Jill Stein is a woman. Like Hillary, Jill Stein is liberal. It is safe to say that someone who voted for Jill Stein does not have an issue with voting for a woman as President. Its also safe to say they are pretty liberal. Now it is possible that some Stein voters would have stayed home rather than vote for Hillary, lets assume that Stein votes could have been Hillary votes. Would it have changed things?
**For this analysis I am ignoring Johnson data. Ill explain below where it matters but I am working under the assumption that Johnson still ran and Stein didn’t.
Using the numbers available now, lets look at the states were the vote was the closest:
Florida:
Trump — 4,607,146
Clinton — 4,487,657
Stein — 64,060
Closer, but no change. In fact, based on the Senate election numbers, Johnson came closer to costing Trump Florida than Stein costing Clinton.
Pennsylvania:
Trump — 2,890,633
Clinton — 2,817,409
Stein — 48,588
Same as above in both the result and the Johnson voters being likely Trump voters. In fact based on the Senate numbers a LOT of voters voted in the Presidential election and not the Senate race.
Michigan:
Trump — 2,277,914
Clinton — 2,264,807
Stein — 51,420
Ding Ding Ding!! We have a winner! Or in this case a loser. 13K vote gap. 51K for Stein. That sucks and that is 16EV
Wisconsin:
Trump — 1,411,432
Clinton — 1,383,926
Stein — 30,942
And another winne…..maybe not so fast. Russ Feingold lost by 100K and his numbers were almost identical to Clintons. But like Pennsylvania, a LOT of Wisconsin voters sat out the senate race. Still, Im going to go with he hard numbers and they say that absent the Stein option, Hillary would have won by about 4K votes. That sucks and that is 10 EV.
And thats it. No other race was close where Stein had significant votes and Hillary didn’t win. Stein voters may have made New Hampshire, Colorado and Minnesota closer but didn’t change the outcome. Barely. 26EV would have put Clinton at 258. Close, but close doesn't count.
When I started this I though I was going to find 40+ EVs that Stein impacted. Instead I found 26 with a reasonable argument for only 16. We can speculate that Gary Johnson voters were potential Hillary voters but it seems far more were fans of neither candidate based on Senate voting. In South Carolina almost all of the third party numbers are above the Senate total. Same in Missouri. In Nevada a HUGE number of people voted for President and skipped the Senate. In Illinois it will likely come close to 400K more people voting for President than Senate. My early post lamented voter apathy but it seems like voter outrage actually drove UP the numbers in Presidential voting. Without it we would be staring at historic lows for overall turnout.
So what does all that mean? Approximately 1.2 million voters had no problem voting for a woman for President, just not the one named Hillary Clinton. Those 1.2 million votes would have gotten her closer in a lot of places and run up her popular vote win but would not have changed the overall election. Had I found that Stein had tipped the election, it would disprove the “I won't vote for a woman” theory. It didn’t. But what I think it proves instead is that voters disliked Hillary. Some disliked her so much they voted for Trump. Some disliked her so much they stayed home. And apparently over a million disliked her so much they voted for Jill Stein. I don't think that dislike was based on gender. 30 years of “vast right wing conspiracy” did its job. It was aided by a campaign that at times was beyond tone deaf and was unable to see the very clear danger signs. Had Jill Stein not been running, Hillary probably would have picked up some of those votes. Some. But its just as likely those voters would have stayed home. Based on numbers from close Senate races, a significant majority of the third party vote was a true protest vote — voters who had no intention of voting for either major party candidate. So once again we are back to turnout. When Dems vote, Dems win. Dems didnt vote.