The media likes to pretend third-party candidates like the Libertarian’s Gary Johnson and the Green’s Jill Stein don’t exist in the horse race between Romney and Obama. This isn’t surprising, but the level of ignorance is simply stunning sometimes. It’s one thing to just not talk about them very much. It’s another to not include them as options in most of the polls even though they will be on the ballots in most of the states. But it’s exceptionally frustrating when they are included in a poll, shining brightly with record levels of support, and everyone still pretends they don’t exist!
CNN just released a new poll in the almighty swing state of Ohio. The big headline:
Obama 50% – Romney 47% in Ohio
This is followed by two or three pages of fascinating analysis and quotes and context about how important this is for everyone and everything. Buried in the third-to-last paragraph is the following:
Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson, Green Party candidate Jill Stein, and Constitution Party candidate Virgil Goode are also on the presidential ballot in Ohio.When their names were added to the poll, Obama is at 47%, Romney 44%, with Johnson at 5%, Stein at 1% and Goode registering less than one-half of one percent.
Wait, what’s that?! There were actually two polls in this poll?! The first with Obama 50%, Romney 47%, and the second with Obama 47%, Romney, 44%, Johnson 5%, Stein 1%? Guess which poll actually reflects the ballot choices this year in Ohio?
It might make sense to gush over the first poll if Romney and Obama were the only names on the ballot. But the actual ballot has five names on it. The 50%-47% headline comes from a set of polling options that do not really exist!
Yet those are the numbers at the top of the page. Those are the numbers RealClearPolitics displays when it links to the poll. Those are the numbers newspapers quote in their articles. Those are the numbers everyone is talking about. (To be fair, Nate Silver has the more accurate numbers.) Even when third-party candidates exist, they still don’t exist.
This isn’t an isolated incident; I’ve been watching it happen for months. Just look at most of the polls on GaryJohnsonPolls.com with an “Estimated Support Pull.” Ask about Romney and Obama, make those numbers the headline and talk, talk, talk about those numbers, and then oh by the way if we ask about all the candidates that are actually on the ballot, you get these different numbers, but don’t pay any attention to them because then you might notice that there is actually some support for these candidates!
Of All The Polls To Ignore
What makes the ignorance so frustrating is that, all of the polls to ignore, this one is a phenomenal poll for Gary Johnson. CNN has polled Ohio three times in the last month, and Johnson’s numbers have grown from 3% to 4% to 5%. Third-party candidate support is supposed to drop closer to election day. Third-party candidates aren’t supposed to be as attractive in swing states. But in the biggest swing state of them all, in a state that may end up deciding the entire election, and with only half a week to go, Johnson’s support is registering at record levels*!
*Well, if we don’t count that 11% outlier poll from Gravis in September that nobody ever duplicated. For every other more proven pollster that has ever included Johnson on a poll in Ohio, these are record levels.
Furthermore, despite having support (5%) that is greater than the margin of victory (3%), he is not spoiling the race for either candidate! Johnson tends to pull more from Romney than Obama but still noticeably from both. In this case, both candidates drop 3% when you include Johnson, Stein, and Goode; if we assume that Stein gets her 1% from Obama than Johnson gets 3% from Romney and 2% from Obama – a net loss for neither one.
If Johnson is polling five percent in the unlikely swing state of Ohio, how much support might he have in states that aren’t even close, where his name has never been included in a poll? Does he really have a shot – however improbable – at reaching the five percent threshold?
The pollsters and media are so intent on ignoring third-party candidates that even when they have a chance to merely report numbers for Romney and Obama that are affected by Johnson’s name on the ballot, they still report the misleading numbers that pretend he isn’t there. I guess we’ll just have to wait until Tuesday to see if the remaining non-early voters gravitate to the big two, or if they reveal a big surprise…
WTF!!
I had lazily (but rationally, I would think) assumed a headline number like “50-47” just meant that Johnson/et al were hiding in the other 3. Why the hell don’t they just report the 47-44??
W… T… F… !!
Well, based on historical precedence, they might lazily/rationally assume that those voters will end up voting for one of the big 2 anyway, so it’s not worth reporting those numbers. But this close to Election Day, that doesn’t make as much sense.
But that historical precedence hasn’t been true since ’92…there’s almost always been at least some third-party interest.
Only thing I can think of is that some pollsters run variations that include third-party options but others don’t, and aggregator sites like RCP, etc need to do an apples-apples comparison. By necessity this can only mean picking the no-third-party numbers from every pollster.
But it is certainly frustrating. Now I have to revise my “model”…but I’m not sure the data exists to do it… 🙂
It’s especially poor reporting when you look at the recent historical impact of third party candidates. Just off the top of my head here (and all in my lifetime):
1968: Wallace split from the Democratic Party. Some of those votes would have gone Republican (they eventually did) but if Humphrey could have held his party together, he probably would have won.
1980: If I’m not mistaken, Reagan would have won even if he got all of John Anderson’s votes. But it wouldn’t have been a landslide.
1992 and 1996: Perot got a huge percentage of the vote (above the 5% for his Reform Party). Some suggest that he “took” most of those from the Republicans.
2000: I think it is pretty clear that without Ralph Nader, Al Gore would have been President. Enough people in New Hampshire and Florida voted for the Green and cost the Democrats the White House. More than any other election, this one boggles the mind for its historic impact. It is possible that Gore could have prevented the 9/11 attacks (simply because the change in administration would have been easier). Even if there was an attack, things would have been different. We would have gone into Afghanistan, but not Iraq. That would have saved a few thousand American lives, many thousand Iraqi lives, and somewhere around a trillion dollars. It is possible that Afghanistan would have gone as poorly as it has, but it is also possible that it would have received the attention it deserved. I’m probably being optimistic in thinking we would have been out of Afghanistan five years earlier, but it should be obvious that if Ralph Nader had endorsed Al Gore, we would never have been in Iraq.
Yet somehow the people who report on the polls don’t think third party candidates are important. That doesn’t make sense to me.
Good points – though I disagree with you that it is certain that Gore would not have gone into Iraq; we can’t know one way or the other, and given how poorly Obama has lived up to his original anti-Bush rhetoric regarding foreign policy and civil liberties, I don’t think it’s safe to assume anything about how a Democratic president would have responded to 9/11.
It’s all speculation of course. I think it is likely (if the attacks actually occurred) that Gore would have gotten us into Afghanistan. There was bipartisan support for this. The only folks that didn’t think we should go into Afghanistan were the peacenicks, the isolationists and maybe the folks who had actually spent a lot of time there. This means that maybe we should have stayed out, but it is highly likely that just about any President would have gotten us in there.
Iraq is a different story. It came out of left field. As has been repeated quite often, there was no connection between the 9/11 attackers and Iraq. They didn’t pose a threat. The main reason we got into Iraq was because of Bush, Condoleezza Rice and Rumsfeld. Bush saw what happened after his daddy’s war. He felt like the Iraqi rebels were betrayed. He also saw how it hurt his dad politically (remember the “Saddam Hussein still has his job, do you?” bumper sticker?). He had dreams of liberating Iraq, and thus bolstering our prestige in the area. He rightly noted that we helped tyrannical regimes in the area, and this would get the average Middle East citizen to support us. It would also enable us to get our troops out of Saudi Arabia (and thus away from Mecca). Rice bought into the entire scheme as well. They both figured there would be a cascade of revolutions and uprisings in support of American ideals. Rice was an expert on eastern European (actually, more central European) activities and thought the same sort of thing would happen in the Middle East. In other words, just as the folks beyond the iron curtain rose up and throw off their oppressors, so would the folks in the Middle East. All they needed was a little military support. Rumsfeld, of course, thought such support would be cheap. He, like the rest of them, was horribly, horribly wrong.
Democratic opposition was fierce. But the Democrats didn’t want to appear weak. Guys like Kerry either didn’t want to lose the next election by opposing a war (after being attacked) or felt like it was worth giving Bush the right to attack, even if he didn’t actually attack. Had Bush successfully gotten Saddam to back down (and it looks like he could have) then Bush would have been ridiculously popular. He could have strutted around, telling the world he was the tough guy and he was the one that could push around Saddam, even though weak Clinton never got the guy to do anything. I’m a bit surprised he didn’t do that, but I underestimated his stupidity and optimism.
I think if Gore had been president the issue of Iraq would never have come up.