Third-party voters made it difficult to predict 2016, says pollster

[mystery-ak]

10/4/2018

Pollster Emily Ekins said during an interview on Thursday that third party candidates they made it difficult for pollsters to predict the results of the 2016 presidential election.

"There were so many factors going on in the 2016 election, one in particular also were the extraordinarily high number of people who voted for a third party," Ekins, polling director at the Cato Institute, told Hill.TV's Joe Concha on "What America's Thinking."

"I think it was a quadrupling of what we had seen in the prior election," she continued. "Evan McMullin, the Independent candidate, Gary Johnson, Libertarian, Jill Stein," she continued.

"I think there was about eight million people who cast a ballot for a third party. It's very hard to have precision and stability in your election forecast," she said.

"I think in 2012 it was maybe one or two million people voted for a third party. Having that quadrupled to 8 million, that makes it very hard to predict accurately."

Third party candidates played major roles in states considered safe for Clinton but ended up going for Trump.

Johnson and Stein took roughly 222,400 votes in Michigan, while Trump had carried the state by just over 10,000 votes.

They also played a major role in Florida, where Johnson, Stein, and two other took over 293,000 votes votes, according to NBC News.

Trump won Florida by roughly 112,911 votes.

— Julia Manchester

https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/409941-third-party-voters-made-it-difficult-to-predict-2016-says

[truth_seeker]

The GOP is the best vehicle, for conservatives, libertarians, Libertarians, Classical Liberals and others to have a seat in power, not just on the ballot.

So many of the candidates themselves, are kooks though.

Strong GOP candidates really ought to reach out to them, explain major common grounds.

--Low taxes

--Legalization/decriminalization of Killer Weed

--Fair Free Trace

--Avoid endless, unnecessary wars


--Free Speech

etc.

[kevindavis007]

I know there are two third party candidates in Illinois who is trying to help the Democrat candidate for Governor win.

[InHeavenThereIsNoBeer]

I got three poll calls in two days this week.  The first two didn't seem to understand that Dem/Rep/Ind are not the only choices.  I'm not an Independent, I'm just not dependent on the big two.

The third started okay, then asked a bunch of questions about how the Dem candidate for gov's missteps would affect my vote.

[corbe]

   Had I believed hellary had a chance of getting Texas's 39 Electoral votes in 2016 I would have crawled across cut glass to vote for Trump, with that being said, obviously he was not the worse option, just the second to worse option, for me.
   I voted for this party and my vote counted, as this article states.