In Michigan, third-party presidential candidate votes could play a role

If the polls aren’t catastrophic, either Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris or former Republican President Donald Trump will occupy the White House next year. But in Michigan, votes for the other candidates on the ballot could impact the outcome of a tight race between the two in the critical battleground state.

With six third-party candidates on the ballot for president, Michigan is tied only with Wisconsin for having the most options among swing states for protest voters dissatisfied with the choices the two major parties have offered them. Could any of these third-party candidates be spoilers that affect the Michigan race, helping Harris or Trump win?

“Many of the threats of spoiler effects are overblown,” said Valdosta State University political science professor Bernard Tamas. But this year, he said he sees the potential for Michigan elections to see third-party votes make an impact. “If there’s one state where the spoiler effect is going to happen, it’s most likely to be in Michigan. I think it’s actually probably pretty low in most states, unless the votes are extremely close. But Michigan is a little outlier. .”

In addition to Harris and Trump, Michigan’s ballot for the presidential race includes Natural Rights candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., independent candidate Joseph Kishore, libertarian candidate Chase Oliver, Green Party candidate Jill Stein, American Taxpayers candidate Randall Terry and independent candidate Cornel West. By comparison, there were four third-party candidates in Michigan on both the 2016 and 2020 general election ballots.

This year, the hundreds of thousands of Arab American and Muslim voters could give Stein enough support, for example, to make a difference, Tamas said. Arab-American and Muslim voters in Michigan, frightened by Israel’s military attacks in Gaza and elsewhere, tried to use the ballot box to push for a shift in US foreign policy toward the Middle East. A national Arab-American conference in Dearborn earlier this year present Stein and West.

The National Unemployed Movement, which called on Democrats to vote “unemployed” in the presidential primary to protest President Joe Biden’s policies in Gaza has refused to endorse Harris. But the group’s leaders said they oppose Trump and see that third-party votes could help the GOP nominee win.

Democrats are worried about votes for third-party candidates. The Democratic National Committee on Tuesday announced a new ad campaign in Michigan and other swing states, saying a vote for Stein or West equals a vote for Trump. New digital ads features Trump’s comment from a Philadelphia rally in June in which he praised Stein and West. “He’s one of my favorite candidates, Cornel West,” Trump said. “I like her too, Jill Stein. I like her a lot. You know why? She takes 100% from them. He takes 100%,” Trump said. In the same speech, Trump said Kennedy’s impact was “probably 50-50,” suggesting the independent candidate was taking the same number of votes from both the Democratic and Republican candidates.

The Harris campaign declined to comment and referred the Free Press to the DNC. “A vote for Stein or West is a vote for Trump. The only way to avoid a repeat of 2016 is to cast your vote for Vice President Harris,” DNC senior counsel Mary Beth Cahill said in a statement Tuesday.

Stein rejected the attacks. “In a democracy, nobody owns your vote, the candidates have to earn your vote, and the only ‘spoilers’ are the political elites working overtime to deny a meaningful democratic choice to voters who are hungry for a real choice,” he said. she said in a statement emailed by her campaign on Wednesday. West’s campaign did not respond to an email from the Free Press seeking comment.

On the Republican side, Kennedy said ended his presidential campaign because he didn’t want to take votes away from Trump. He launched a legal bid to have his name removed from the Michigan ballot. US Supreme Court REJECTED his request on Tuesday.

Asked if the Trump campaign was worried that votes for a third-party candidate would hurt Trump in Michigan, the campaign’s national press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said in an emailed statement last Wednesday: “President Trump is building with I support the largest and most diverse political movement in history. from conservatives, independents and even Democrats like RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard”.

In the last two Michigan presidential elections, the Libertarian candidate received the most votes of any third-party candidate. In fact, in 2020 and 2016, the Libertarian candidate garnered 2.5 times the number of votes for all other third-party candidates combined. Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgensen won 60,381 votes in 2020, while Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson won 172,136 votes in 2016.

But for votes for third-party candidates to make a difference, the election has to take a certain shape: close, according to political scientists. And a large number of third-party votes doesn’t necessarily mean they have an impact on the bottom line, since it’s unclear whether those third-party voters would ever vote for a major party candidate in that race or even show up for the race. vote at all.

Close elections could have an impact on third-party votes

The US has “the third least successful countries in the rich world,” said Michigan State University political science professor Matt Grossmann. “A lot of people who would be third-party voters elsewhere aren’t here,” he said. Still, in a close race, a small number of votes could make the difference, according to Grossmann.

Since 1980, the vote for third-party candidates and write-in candidates in Michigan has exceeded the margin of victory for the winning presidential candidate three times: in 1980, 1992, and 2016.

In 1980, then-Republican U.S. Representative John B. Anderson of Illinois ran as an independent and won over 275,000 votes in Michigan, where former California Governor Ronald Reagan defeated then-President Jimmy Carter by over 253,000 votes in the state . In 1992, independent candidate Ross Perot spent millions to self-finance his presidential bid and received more than 824,000 votes in Michigan. Democrat Bill Clinton defeated GOP incumbent George HW Bush in Michigan that year by more than 316,000 votes. In 2016, Trump beat Hillary Clinton by just over 10,000 votes — or 0.23 percentage points. It was the closest margin of victory of any state that year. Johnson received more than 172,000 votes and Stein more than 51,000 votes in 2016.

But just because the third-party vote exceeded the margin of victory, doesn’t mean the third-party candidates were spoilers.

Democrats continue to blame Clinton’s loss in Michigan and other key battlegrounds on votes for third-party candidates. But the argument that third-party votes cost Clinton the state assumes that those voters would still have turned out and supported Clinton. An in-depth analysis of the 2016 election by political scientists throws cold water on the theory that third-party candidates enabled Trump’s Electoral College victory.

For a third-party candidate to be a spoiler, it takes a situation like the incredibly close 2000 presidential election in Florida, Tamas said. There, George W. Bush defeated Al Gore 537 votes — a margin of 0.009 percentage points — and Green Party candidate Ralph Nader won 97,488 votes — 1.6 percent of the vote cast.

How do third-party candidates poll in Michigan?

An October poll commissioned by the Free Press by Lansing-based EPIC-MRA found 3 percent of voters supporting Stein and Kennedy, respectively, and 1 percent for West. The poll polled 600 likely Michigan voters. It was conducted October 24-28 and has a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points. Kennedy polled higher in the summer. When Biden was still in the race, a The June survey showed 10% support for Kennedy and 2% for Stein and West, respectively.

Contact Clara Hendrickson: [email protected] or 313-296-5743. Follow X, formerly Twitter, @clarajanehen.

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