• acargitz@lemmy.ca
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    15 hours ago

    I don’t understand why it is taken for granted that if Stein wasn’t a candidate the people who vote for her would be voting for the Democrats instead. Just as likely they would not vote at all or vote for some other protest candidate.

    • SSJMarx@lemm.ee
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      14 hours ago

      I saw some stats on this in another thread, most third party voters wouldn’t be voting if their candidate wasn’t on the ballot, and most third party voters benefit Democrats down ballot. The spoiler candidate logic has always been sketchy.

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        13 hours ago

        The spoiler candidate logic has always been sketchy.

        it depends on how popular third party is. If they’re getting 20-30% of the vote but no more it’s extremely common for them to drop out to support the primary instead.

        Anything lower than 10% and it probably doesn’t matter much. RFK jr is a decent exmaple of this, although he was more “bipartisan” in terms of support, apparently.

        • turmacar@lemmy.world
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          13 hours ago

          The last US Presidential election decided with more than a 10% margin was Regan. The only vote with above a 5% margin this millennium was Obama’s first term.

          “Anything lower than 10% and it probably doesn’t matter much” is a weird take.

          • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            7 hours ago

            this is assuming that the voter split isn’t roughly at random. Jill stein is running on either extremely far left anti war sentiment, which we see among the right as well, along with cozying up to russia apparently, which only tankies and farther right people want.

            That alone is pretty mixed.

            Generally unless the candidate is going to pull a large enough share of the votes to the point where it enact a significant draw from the candidate hence my 20-30% figure, it really won’t do anything to the voter turnout. Like i said, as we saw with RFK, it was roughly split down the middle.

            Jill stein might pull more far lefties, but that’s only because they refuse to vote in their best interest lmao. They wouldn’t vote anyway.

            • WamGams@lemmy.ca
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              3 hours ago

              Conservative voters are not anti-war, they are anti-Russian war, and the Republican ticket already addresses that. These people don’t historically vote for left wing parties, nor are they in this case.

              The green party’s base is pot smokers and college students who haven’t gotten wise to the green grift yet.

              • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                56 minutes ago

                Conservative voters are not anti-war, they are anti-Russian war, and the Republican ticket already addresses that. These people don’t historically vote for left wing parties, nor are they in this case.

                it depends. Some of them are anti-war because they’re isolationist, and they don’t want to be a part of the ongoing global politics thingy. Some of them as you said, are anti russian war, which is absolutely true. A lot of these same republicans also support israel, although that might be construed differently since they are technically an ally of the US. But that is pretty the case there.

                The green party’s base is pot smokers and college students who haven’t gotten wise to the green grift yet.

                it’s either stupid people who don’t know anything about politics, or people who think the green party is a real political party lol.

          • Krauerking@lemy.lol
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            12 hours ago

            As in that’s such a small group they are probably more dedicated to their candidate and won’t vote for anyone else.

            Again. You can’t expect to remove candidates from a ballot and their support will all just vote Democrat. It’s a false logic to assume they belong to anywhere else other than their vote block.
            When you have a large base that small percentage that’s willing to vote off base ends up being a larger percentage of the vote overall as well.

            Currently you would have to get every single last green party voter to give up and vote Blue which is an impossible ask. So even at 5% of the vote I’m not sure they could swing an election with enough if their candidate asked nicely.
            They went high with their estimate though.

            • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              7 hours ago

              yeah, my 10% figure was probably generous, but i think i would probably stand by it in most cases, as unless you’re polling 20% at bare minimum you’re probably dropping out of primaries anyway out of fears of “siphoning” votes. Realistically the outcome between the two alternatives here is probably marginal, if at all.

    • morphballganon@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      Because people who are disillusioned that the green party would address their concerns are generally not complete shitheads like republicans; they’re decent but misled people.

    • celsiustimeline@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      9 hours ago

      Because a vote abstention is a vote for the person in the lead. If Harris is in the lead, then every single American who abstains from voting is essentially helping her win, but the same is true if Trump is in the lead. Convincing Green voters that it makes more sense in a FPTP system to vote Democrat as its the closest party to their preferred ideology is a statistically productive activity.