Wednesday, January 28, 2004
Electoral politics 101 and Ralph Nader
Or, briefly, explaining why having Ralph Nader start a third-party candidacy right now is a recipe for unmitigated disaster.
As you know, when Americans vote for president, they are actually casting their ballots for the electoral votes of their particular state. Each state has a different number of votes, based on population and adjusted every few years as the proportions of the population vary among the states.
By law, each state's electors must agree to cast all their votes for *one* candidate, no matter how many candidates there are. (Changing this would make a vast difference, but it's not going to happen in the near future.)
If there are two candidates running, the race becomes a contest of one person's abilities against another's. Issues may be raised and debated, and the voters may choose based on these issues (and other factors, of course.) But the point remains that it's a binary way to go -- A or B -- and simple to calculate.
If Candidate A has enough states' votes to give him the election, Candidate B may choose to campaign in more of the states that will give him the votes he needs. That's the way it is.
Now add a third candidate.
In theory, a third party will oppose both candidates, raising the level of debate and creating a more level playing field, as the incumbent who is running for re-election always has the advantage that, regardless of how well he has done, he's a known factor and the challenger's abilities are unknown.
In practice in modern America, this doesn't work that way.
Instead, in practice, the third-party candidate will join the challenger in opposing the incumbent, scoop up some of the votes that otherwise would have gone to the challenger and few if any of the votes for the incumbent -- and the incumbent will win the election and stay in office.
(In a situation where all parties are challengers and there is no incumbent, the politics will be different, the odds are different, and the situation may not be what I have outlined above -- but in 2004 we are dealing with an incumbent situation, not a situation of equal challengers.)
What's our situation now? As of the New Hampshire Primary, John Kerry is the frontrunner for the Democratic ticket, followed by Howard Dean. Both have relatively strong positions on enough issues opposing the incumbent, Bush, to give either one a fair chance in November.
And now Ralph Nader has decided to consider running as a third-party candidate.
Imagine the collective electoral votes as if they were slices taken from one pie. Suppose the race is as close as the last two have been, with only a tiny fraction of the vote making the difference. 51% to 49%. 50.1% to 49.9%. A few hundred thousand votes determining the course of the next four years in America and the world. Now suppose that the third candidate scoops up a few hundred thousand or a few million votes, one or two states' electoral votes. Since Nader would be opposing Bush, those votes would have to come from the people who would otherwise be voting for the Democratic candidate, whose total electoral-vote slice of the pie would get smaller. Bush's slice of the pie wouldn't necessarily get bigger; it wouldn't have to. All he'd have to do is hold onto the pie he's got, and watch his opponents take it away from each other to give him the next four years on a platter.
Why am I going into this? Because Ralph Nader is exploring the possibility of running, and if he does I believe he will divide the opposition to Bush enough to throw the election back to the Republicans. This is the site he's set up onlline to take comments. If you agree with me, please take the time to go there and tell him not to run this time. Tell him he's gotten into the contest too late, tell him he will divide opposition to Bush so that only Bush will win. Tell him he will be devil's advocate for the Republicans. Just tell him not to run as a third-party candidate, and to put his resources and support and ideas behind whichever Democratic candidate he sees as most worthy of his aid.
Thanks for listening.
ETA: This site has a short video that explains the breakdown of votes in the last election and how much of a difference it made.
1/28/2004 11:36:00 AM
|
|
