Stoneage Ramblings

By John R. Stone

A recent news item reported that the two major political party campaigns were going to go after people who vote for third party candidates and try to get them to vote for their side, the argument being that a vote for a third party candidate was a vote for the other guy depending upon which party was making the claim.

At first I thought, how many voters could that be? Wouldn’t they be better off to concentrate on independents? So I checked Federal Election Commission records back to 2000 and the numbers are surprising.

Over the past six presidential elections the number of people who voted for a candidate other than a Republican or Democrat has varied widely, from one percent of those casting a ballot in 2004 to 5.73 percent in 2016. Other years it has remained below two percent.

What is that in numbers? In 2004 it amounted to 1,226,291 votes (one percent) while in 2016 it amounted to 7,830,934 votes (5.73 percent).

There are different numbers of “other” candidates on various ballots. Not everyone files in all states. If I counted right in 2020 there were 35 different candidates besides the Republican and Democratic candidate.

The 2016 election pitted Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump. Clinton garnered 65,853,514 votes or 48.18 percent of the total vote. Trump received 62,984,828 votes which was 46.09 percent of the vote. Trump won the Electoral College 304 to 227 because he won states with more Electoral College votes.

Just 77,747 votes spread among three states, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, could have been Clinton’s if she would have won a relative handful of people who voted for someone other than a Republican or Democrat.

In Michigan Clinton lost the popular vote by 10,704 votes while 250,902 voted for non-major party candidates. In Pennsylvania she lost by 44,292 votes while 268,304 people voted for candidates other than her or Trump. And in Wisconsin she lost by 22,748 votes while 188,330 voted for non-major party candidates. Just 77,747 votes spread over three states where 13,040,912 people in total voted for president could have made a  difference.

In 2020 a similar thing happened to Donald Trump when he lost Arizona, Wisconsin and Georgia by numbers that were a small fraction of the number of those who voted for neither Trump or Joseph Biden. In Georgia, where Trump famously claimed he needed 11,799 votes, there were 64,473 who voted for neither Trump or Biden. In Arizona that number was 10,457 while 53,497 didn’t vote for either major candidate. The magic number in Wisconsin was 20,682 votes needed, 56,991 voted for others.

So it makes sense for campaigns to get some of those interested in third parties to vote for them. They want to vote for someone!

Another election issue was the huge vote turnout of 2020. A total of 158,429,631 voted for president in 2020 which compared with 136,669,276 in 2016. That’s an increase of 21,760,355. The previous couple of elections, the increase in voters was much smaller and the 2012 vote count of 129,085,410 was actually two million smaller than the 2008 vote count.

But there was another year with a big jump in voters voting. The 2004 voter count of 122,295,345 was 16,898,704 more than the count of 2000. So there are years where more people are inspired to vote for some reason.

With Robert Kennedy Jr. running as a non-major party candidate in 2024 those who support him may swell the ranks of those not voting for a Republican or Democrat in 2024. A few million votes from those who traditionally voted for a major party candidate could swing the election one way or the other.

The only question now is whether that would benefit the current Republican or Democratic candidate. I guess we’ll know November 6.