A lot of people say third party voters cost Hillary Clinton the election. Most people who say this assume one of three things. They assume:
a) Majority of third party voters were going to vote for Hillary.
b) All third party voters were going to vote for Hillary.
c) Third Party voters wouldn’t stay home if they only had two options.
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Lucky, thanks to a CBS News poll, we know how many third party voters would have voted for Hillary, would have voted for Trump and who would have stayed home. As we all know, your vote only matters in 11 swing states. If you do not understand the electoral college system, I explained it in this article Why Your Vote Matters More if you Vote Third Party. I applied these numbers to the total number of Third Party Voters in each state and what I found was very interesting.
I found that every single swing state that Hillary lost in the general election with these third party voters, she still lost these states when these numbers are applied. She lost by a slightly smaller margin but the margins she lost by were so large even the six percent edge Hillary had in third party voters over Trump after I accounted the 55 percent of voters that would have sat out of the election, had it been a two party race, Hillary wouldn’t have won any additional states. She would have still won 4 of 11 swing states.
In total, 4.4 percent of the country voted third party in 2016. This includes Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, the two most known third party candidates as well as Evan McMullan, Richard Duncan, Darrell Castle, Rocky De La Fuente, Emidio Soltysik, Chris Keniston, Mike Smith, Kyle Kopitke, Joseph Maldonado, Michael Maturen, Ryan Scott, Rod Silva, Tom Hoefling, Gloria La Riva, Alyson Kennedy, Laurence Kotlikoff, Bradford Lyttle, Frank Atwood, Jim Hedges etc. When you apply the 55 percent of third party voters who would not have voted in a two party race, 1.98 percent of voters remains. When you apply the 24 percent of the remaining 1.98 percent, Hillary Clinton would have gained .48 percent more. Donald Trump would have gained 18 percent of the remaining 1.98 percent which would have gained him .36 percent of the vote. Hillary Clinton lost these swing states by more than one point. The net .12 percent that she gained over Trump wouldn’t have won her an additional state.
Hillary performed so horribly in the swing states winning four out of 11 states, that if I gave her 100 percent of third party voters and no one stayed home, she would have won 8 wins states. Donald Trump won seven swing state.
Something has to give for the democratic party. The democratic party prevents millions of independent from voting in the primaries. Independents are the largest voting bloc in the country; 43 percent of all voters are independent. These independents who were not allowed to vote in the primaries, the same people who you disenfranchised, you expect them to come out and vote for you in the general election? You tell them, your vote does not matter until I say it matters. Shut up until I tell you to talk. People will not accept that. They didn’t accept that. The democratic party needs to become a party of the people or risk dying out. Third Party Voters did not cost Hillary Clinton the election. The numbers disprove that theory.
Hillary Clinton lost because she and the DNC ran the worst campaign in history. I will discuss why Hillary lost further in later articles but blaming voters is the wrong thing to do. It’s the candidate's job to go out and earn votes. If the politicians failed to do so, then that’s their fault. Not the voters. These politicians and their defenders are operating under the premise that the people can only fail the politician and the politicians can never fail the people. Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, you failed us. You failed the country and you failed the world. You lost become no one wanted to vote for you. They voted for you out of fear of Trump. Everyone doesn’t operate that way. That’s why 7 million fewer people voted this election cycle. That why Mitt Romney received more votes that you and Trump. That’s why fewer women and a lower percentage of women voted for Hillary than Obama.
Don’t allow people to shame you for not voting for Jill Stein, Gary Johnson or any third party voter. Polls show, your vote wasn’t enough to prevent Trump from winning but either way. Hillary didn’t earn you vote. You can blame the electoral college for Hillary not winning, you can blame the pollsters for getting the polls wrong which may have led to a lack of urgency but that’s not the right thing to do. It’s time for everyone blaming third party voters to act like adults and point the finger at the person who did everything to lose this election: Hillary Clinton. You can continue to point fingers at third party voters but that would make you anti-fact and not much better than the republicans.
To learn more, you can check out New York Times Exit Polling data and How Third Party Voters would have Voted in a Two-Way Race. We will only beat Trump and neoliberalism if we fight.
*If you have a hard time seeing the charts, you can click here.
