A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.

1 September 2016

MT Democrats survived Green Party candidates in 2002 and 2004

As reported in a post at Montana Cowgirl earlier this week, Will Johnson and Stein create chaos in Montana?, Montana’s Democrats are concerned that Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein will draw enough votes to qualify the Green Party to nominate candidates through a primary election:

There is a downside to all of this: if Jill Stein gets a total vote that equals 5% of whatever the successful gubernatorial candidate receives, it means that the Green Party will have qualified for the ballot in the next few elections. This, in turn, means that Democrats could soon be having to deal with Green Party candidates siphoning off a few points per election, just as the GOP must now deal with the Libertarian party doing the same.

I think Stein will qualify the Green Party for the Montana ballot, just as Ralph Nader did in 2000. But will that hurt Democrats? The elections of 2002 and 2004 suggest the answer is: not always.

green_gen_2002_2004

In the 2002 and 2004 general elections, three statewide, and six legislative district, Green candidates qualified for the ballot. None won.

  • In House District 13 in 2002, the Democrat won with a plurality. In House District 23 in 2004, no Republican was on the ballot. In the rest of the legislative district elections, the Republican candidate won with a majority.

  • In the 2002 election for U.S. Senator, Democrat Max Baucus won with 64.8 percent of the vote. Green Party Bob Kelleher (who would win the Republican nomination for U.S. Senator in 2008) received 2.3 percent of the vote.

  • In 2004, Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb received 0.2 percent of the vote while Democrat John Kerry received 38.6 percent. In that year’s gubernatorial election, won by Democrat Brian Schweitzer with 50.4 percent of the vote, Green Party candidate Bob Kelleher received 1.9 percent of the vote. Kelleher probably reduced Schweitzer’s margin of victory, but he did not deny Schweitzer a majority.

Would the voters who opted for Green Party candidates have voted for the Democratic candidate had the Green Party candidate not been on the ballot? I suspect the answer is “yes” for many, perhaps even most, but not all. Some might not have voted. I cannot imagine a Green Party voter casting a ballot for a right leaning candidate, such as a Libertarian, except as an act of perversity.

Still, in our plurality wins system, a small third party vote can perturb the ideological outcome of an election. Democrats have cause to worry that a strong vote for Stein could hurt Democrats in 2018 and 2020.