What’s up, doc?
The 2000 and 2016 cycles had a number of similarities, besides the fact that the popular vote winner didn’t become president. These cycles both followed a two-term Democratic administration, so there was no incumbent candidate running. In both cycles, the Republican nominee was an intellectual lightweight, while the Democratic nominee was a brainy centrist who had served the current Democratic president at a very high level. The president was a brainy centrist too, but also very comfortable and affable on stage — a political talent his heir apparent found more challenging (but was self-aware enough to be self-effacing about it).
All those factors would seem to be advantageous for a candidate seeking votes on the Green Party ticket, and indeed both Ralph Nader and Jill Stein did much better in these cycles than in the previous cycles when a charismatic incumbent Democratic president was running. Nader captured about 4 times more votes in 2000 than he did in 1996, and Stein captured about 3 times more votes in 2016 than she did in 2012.
But the raw number of votes Nader and Stein captured were staggeringly different. In 2000, Ralph Nader got 2.9 million votes, while, 16 years later — even with the country’s population naturally having grown, and even with the new social media (there was of course no Facebook in 2000 for anyone to take advantage of) — Jill Stein managed to capture only 1.5 million votes.
According to Wikipedia, the turnout rate was practically the same in both cycles, just a lot more people voting in 2016, as you’d expect with the rise in population.
Year |
Voting Age Population |
# who voted |
% of VAP who voted |
2000 |
209,787,000 |
105,594,000 |
55.7% |
2016 |
250,056,000 (est.) |
137,847,000 (est.) |
55.5% |
Yet Nader got about twice as many votes as Stein. Why did he fare so much better? Certainly, he had longer roots in politics and had gained a fair degree of fame for his consumer advocacy in the 60’s and 70’s, so he was better known by the time he ran for president than Stein was. But unless stalwart Greens and people who lean Green extremely disliked Stein, you would think with 16 years of population growth and the same national turnout rate, the 2016 Green presidential candidate could manage to do much better than getting only half as many votes as the 2000 Green presidential candidate.
By contrast, look at the Republicans: their nominee was so despicable that famous Republicans wouldn’t even attend the convention. No-shows included the GOP’s two previous presidents and two previous presidential nominees, and the convention state’s own governor. And well-known conservative organs editorialized against the nominee. This was all unprecedented, yet still most Republicans voted for him, and he ended up with about 12.5 million more votes than Bush got in 2000 — attributable obviously not to charm and good looks but to the increase in population. So why did Stein do so comparatively poorly?
Sexism may be part of it, but I don’t think sexism could explain such a very large vote deficit, particular considering that in 2016, America’s popular vote winner for president was a woman. It doesn’t stand to reason that Greens and Green-leaning voters would be very much more sexist than the general electorate.
The Fear Factor
Perhaps the sentiments expressed in this Daily Kos diary (the writer describes himself as a former Green, left-of-center independent) were not atypical of folks who lean Green: he felt Stein was a second-rate candidate and though he favored Bernie Sanders in the primaries, he said he planned to vote for Hillary Clinton in the general because
I just have to feel secure knowing that the person with their finger on the button is reasonably sane.
It’s anecdotal, of course — I came across that diary only because it popped up when, on a lark, I Googled “why didn’t Jill Stein get as many votes as Ralph Nader” (the query results didn’t directly address the question) — but surely that diarist wasn’t unique.
Trump was indeed more scary and repugnant than George W. Bush was in 2000, so it stands to reason that many folks who tend to vote Green rather than voting for a centrist Democrat would have been less inclined to do so in 2016. While that diarist felt Ralph Nader shouldn’t be blamed for Gore’s loss, I suspect that because of Nader’s perceived impact on the 2000 race and the ruinous Republican administration that followed, one of Nader’s legacies may well have been to diminish the ability of a Green Party candidate (or anyone on the left reminiscent of Nader) to capture votes in subsequent presidential elections. Nader himself ran twice again and never achieved numbers anywhere near his 2000 tally.
While Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson did comparatively well in 2016, that ticket could be expected to attract not just folks who don’t tend to be loyal to either of the two major parties, but also folks who in any normal cycle would have voted Republican, but couldn’t stomach voting for the GOP’s extraordinarily egregious 2016 nominee.
The Bernie Factor
Another reason that the Green candidate did so comparatively poorly in 2016 compared to 2000 may have been simply this: In 2000, Ralph Nader was the most popular populist candidate on the left in the country, while in 2016, the most popular populist candidate on the left wasn’t the Green candidate, it was Bernie Sanders, who not only wasn’t aligned with the Greens, but had donned the Democratic label and during the general election strongly supported the Democratic nominee.
By contrast, Ralph Nader suggested that the country would be better off electing Bush than Gore:
Wikipedia
Nader often openly expressed his hope for Bush's victory over Gore, saying it "would mobilize us",[46] and that environmental and consumer regulatory agencies would fare better under Bush than Gore.[47] When asked which of the two he'd vote for if forced, Nader answered "Bush… If you want the parties to diverge from one another, have Bush win."[48] As to whether he would feel regret if he caused Gore's defeat, Nader replied "I would not — not at all. I'd rather have a provocateur than an anesthetizer in the White House."[49] On another occasion, Nader answered this question with: "No, not at all... There may be a cold shower for four years that would help the Democratic Party... It doesn't matter who is in the White House."[47]
In fact, despite the intensity of the 2016 Democratic primary competition, and the internecine warfare among some of the candidates’ ardent supporters (reminiscent of the 2008 primary season), Bernie Sanders was very clear and consistent about how he felt about a Hillary presidency compared to a Republican presidency:
“[O]n her worst day, Hillary Clinton will be an infinitely better candidate and president than the Republican candidate on his best day.” --Bernie Sanders, Nov. 8, 2015
“[O]n her worst day she would be an infinitely better president than either of the Republican candidates.” --Bernie Sanders, Apr. 8, 2016
Though the Green ticket did very poorly in 2016 compared to 2000 (considering population growth) Stein did do much better in 2016 than in 2012. As I pointed out at the top, this may mostly be attributable to the fact that in 2016 there was no popular, charismatic incumbent Democratic president running.
But did Bernie’s tough primary battle with Hillary gin up anti-Hillary sentiment among some folks on the left, making the Green (or perhaps the Libertarian) ticket more attractive to some of them? That can’t be discounted, just as it can’t be discounted that the vast majority of Bernie supporters did vote for Hillary Clinton. We can only speculate whether Bernie’s candidacy had any effect on Stein’s vote tally, and if so whether it was a net negative or net positive effect. What if Bernie hadn’t run for president, or had been dispatched much earlier in the primaries? We can’t peek into a parallel universe where that happened, to find out if in that universe Stein ended up with more or less votes.
In our own universe, back in 2000, Al Gore did easily dispatch the politician who ran to his left in the primaries: Sen. Bill Bradley, who was endorsed by Paul Wellstone and Robert Reich, didn’t manage to win a single primary contest. So Gore coasted easily to the nomination.
We could imagine an alternate history where Bradley’s candidacy had instead, like Bernie’s, been very competitive and generated a tremendous level of support and excitement among the left of the Democratic Party. It seems reasonable to speculate that this might have negatively impacted the Nader vote and might also have inspired Gore to choose an exciting running mate representing the Democratic left, rather than Joe Lieberman.
The essence of democracy
Democrats angry at Nader voters for the loss of the Gore/Lieberman ticket might take some solace in the fact that the left largely forsook the Green ticket in 2016. But that’s cold comfort, I’m sure, to anyone who is steamed at Stein voters, since while her tally was anemic compared to Nader’s, it wasn’t zero.
Yet how could we expect it to be otherwise? This seems to me an obvious but important point: As long as there exist more political parties in America than just the Democratic and Republican parties, we have to expect that those parties will capture votes, and that their tally may sometimes exceed the margin of victory of the Republican or Democrat.
I’m not personally a fan of Nader’s or Stein’s, but since I consider myself a small-d democrat (as well as a big-D Democrat), I have to believe that voting for whomever one wishes to vote for is the essence of democracy, and that the existence of more than two parties is a feature of American democracy, not a bug.
Increasing the Democratic vote
While the Green Party’s vote drop-off is interesting, I’m not particularly concerned about the Greens’ difficulty in attracting votes.
I do care a lot about increasing the Democratic vote. There are many ways to help with that. One way is promoting the Democratic brand.
Right now, more than 20 other Kossacks and I are sponsoring a project to give FREE pro-Democratic bumper stickers to Kossacks who volunteer their bumpers or who want to distribute free bumper stickers to their pro-Dem contacts. Follow that link and you can get up to 10 of these bumper stickers, free of charge:
These bumper stickers and similar T-shirts are available at no mark-up (no profit for me) at cafepress.com/donkey.
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