this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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Cornel West was a speaker. In the past, having Green Party candidates on the ballot has shifted 2-3% of the population to voting for them instead of the Democrats. That's enough to tip close election, which is what we're likely to have.
Getting his support, and having him stay off the ballot in likely swing states would make a real difference.
can you prove that?
It's a bit lower than I thought; Jill Stein got ~1% of the vote in 2016. The spoiler effect is so well-known that you see Republicans funding Green Party candidates. It's an artifact of how US elections work:
Scenario 1:
D: 11 votes
R: 10 votes
G: 0 votes
Democrat wins
Scenario 2:
D: 10 votes
R: 10 votes
G: 1 votes
Tie decided by game of chance
Scenario 3:
D: 9 votes
R: 10 votes
G: 2 votes
Republican wins
none of this addresses my question:
CAN YOU PROVE THAT 2-3% OF THE POPULATION BOTH HAVE VOTED FOR GREENS, BUT OTHERWISE WOULD HAVE VOTED FOR DEMOCRATS.
i already know the answer: you can't prove a counterfactual.
A good way to is poll twice, once including a Green Party Candidate, and once not. Emerson College did that for some swing states a few weeks back. Here's a pretty typical example, showing how results in Michigan change when West is added to the ballot:
This is why having him on the ballot is a really damaging for the Democrats, and it's important that there be a negotiated policy concession to get him to avoid the damage.
what makes you think this is a good method for proving your claim that 2-3% of all voters were democrat voters who switched to green in past elections?
You are being so rude. Silence is linking all the data and graphs at you and you're spitting in their face.
none of the data or graphs are proof that 2-3% of voters have voted green but would have otherwise voted democrat. demanding proof for a claim isn't rude.
It's a good way of saying what people are thinking of doing, and that's exactly what was happening in Michigan a few weeks ago. Given how close the election is likely to be in that state, even a far smaller number of people voting G instead of D will throw the country for Trump.
a small number of people voding r instead of d will give the election to trump, too.
For sure. But of the people who vote for the greens, many more would have chosen to vote for a Democrat instead.
The Green party could:
But they don't do those things in the US, and instead choose to run candidates where they effectively serve as spoilers
this is a fucking lie. do you get all your information about the green party from msnbc, or directly from the dnc?
I've been watching the Green Party for decades. I see lot of behavior which looks like people running to be on the ballot. I don't see a lot of people running campaigns which look like they're designed to win.
when JUST GETTING ON THE BALLOT is over half the fight, it's understandable that this is a lot of what they do. what do you think running to win looks like? hiring peter dao? nominating a candidate who already has both a good reputation and name recognition? if the greens did that, would you still tell them to "push for policy concessions," but drop out and endorse the democrat whether they get them or not?
Getting on the ballot is a VERY tiny step compared to what it takes to win. You can get on the ballot for a local election by paying a filing fee and asking a few friends to sign.
Actually winning means spending a huge amount of time talking with community groups, obtaining earned media, raising money, and actually convincing people that you can govern in a way that's better than the other candidates.
the green party literally goes to court over ballot access at least twice a decade. you are either woefully misinformed or intentionally spreading misinformation
... You don't think telling someone else that their opinion is "a fucking lie" is rude or mean? I mean sure you can disagree with them, but like just don't be so angry lol
it wasn't an opinion. they stated a false fact. those are also known as fucking lies.
Why are you so mean... just chill out damn
what did I say that was mean? someone else said I was rude and really don't get it.
this totally misses the point: if democrats are worried about losing to republicans, they should be trying to convince people to vote democrat instead of republican. if they're only worried about republicans getting into power and they believe this nonsense about splitting votes, they should vote for the greens.
i for one do NOT believe in this vote-splitting narrative. it assumes that the votes somehow belong to democrats and green candidates steal them. the votes belong to voters, and it's the job of parties to earn those votes, and using FUCKING ABHORENT tactics like keeping other parties out of debates or off the ballot are not how you earn MY vote. i'm sure many others feel the same.
They need to be worried about both losing moderate and low-information voters to the Republicans and losing left-of-center voters to the Greens.
it's not as though they don't know the policies green voters like. they're not losing left of center voters to the greens, tehy're choosing not to attract them and instead play dirty political games.
the polling is interesting but it doesn't prove that any of those people will vote at all.
The 'RV' annotation means it's a poll of people who say they are registered voters.
Proof is a standard for mathematics. Not the real world. It's likely enough that Republicans regularly provide financial support for the Greens. That's good enough for me
registered voters are not the same as likely voters, nor actual past voters. you made a claim that you simply can't prove and none of the data you've provided is, in fact, proof for your claim.
Likely voter models don't work well enough to look at 1-3% kinds of numbers of voters more than a year out from election day. Sorry.
Using actual voters from 2020 is tough because we had two different third parties there: the Greens who siphoned votes off of Biden, and the Libertarians who siphoned a larger number of votes off of Trump. So you see polls showing the combined effect (slightly beneficial to Biden) but not the separate impact of the Green party candidate.
Absolute proof isn't something that really exists in the social sciences, which is why you're never going to find it, the most you find is several decent converging lines of evidence, as we have here.
you can't prove this at all. just because e those people did vote for libertarians or greens does t mean they would have voted for anyone else. in fact, given the option, they did NOT vote for someone else.
this platitude isn't even true. lots of things can be proven false in social sciences. the fact that you are (quixotically) defending an unprovable hypothesis doesn't mean there aren't disprovable hypotheses which are possible.
your claim was about past elections. the data you provided was about a potential future election. you still don't seem to be able to understand what was wrong with your claim.
It's pretty clear that no amount of data is going to actually convince you.
it's not the volume: it's teh quality and relevance. you haven't given me any relevant data to support your claim.
so you have conjecture. you should have just said that instead of stating it as indisputable fact and then trying to snow me with data that doesn't prove your position.
I have:
It's pretty compelling when taken as a whole
i'm of the opinion that democrats spoil green party elections, and if the democrats weren't on the ballot, greens would have won every election for the last 30 years. and i have just as much proof as you do.
The Green candidates are all complete dorks. We have studies on what voters like in a candidate and they have none of those qualities.
this is a nonsequitur
you aren't providing any of those studies. further, as i said, a hypothesis framed like this cannot actually be proven (or disproven), so i don't know what good those studies would do.
I'm not gonna waste my time on your bullshit the way Silence will.
this is not a refutation of anything I've said
"bullshit" would be making a clear claim, then presenting anything except evidence when challenged on it.