Topic: Election 2008
Nader's Best Run This Year?

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Will Ralph Nader's third time be the charm for the presidential bid?

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by Bradley Jansen
(libertarian)
Sunday, October 5, 2008

Nader's Best Run This Year?

This is Ralph Nader's third main campaign for the presidency, and I wanted to analyze how this one is going. Now (mostly) independent Ralph Nader was the Green Party presidential nominee in 2000 winning 2,883,105 popular votes for 2.73% of the total. In 2004, he ran again but (mostly) as an independent and got 463,655 votes (including mine) for only 0.38% of the total. Ralph Nader also won the nomination of these qualified parties this year: Peace & Freedom of California, Natural Law of Michigan, Peace Party of Oregon, Independent of Delaware, and the Independence and Ecology Party, a nationally-organized party on the ballot in Florida, Hawaii and New Mexico.

In the most recent month of polling, Nader (when considered in the national polls) always beats his 2004 level of support but has, on average, fallen just short of his 2000 race results. While Nader hit 6% in several nationwide polls this June and July, he has slipped since the two major party nominating conventions and their selection of vice presidential nominees. Nader is doing remarkably well in the polls for a minor party candidate. The current Real Clear Politics poll average for the six most recent national polls for Nader is 2.7% which essentially ties his 2000 race. Pollster.com does not keep a running average, but the average of their six most recent unique national polls is 2.5%. In the various state polls where he has been considered in the past month, he averages about 2.4% according to USAElectionPolls.com.  Given that his most frequent poll number is 2% and that the averages are bumped by a few outliers, I will use 2.5% for his current polling average, all things considered.

Who are Nader's supporters? Some polls also tell us something of the kind of support Nader is attracting by offering some very useful crosstab information: The polls show that Nader's support is disproportionately more from independents (3% in DailyKos.com (D)/Research 2000 and 6% from The Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg) than Democrats (2% and 1% respectively) and Republicans (zero and 1% respectively). While the Daily Kos daily tracking polls show both men and women supporting Nader equally at 2%, the LA Times poll gives him 2% of the female vote but 3% support from men. The LA Times poll shows Nader getting 2% from liberals and moderates but a surprising 3% of conservatives. According to the Daily Kos, Nader gets 2% from all age groups and regions except only 1% from 18-29 year olds and Southerners. However according to the state poll summaries on USAElectionPolls.com, Nader gets 2% in the Western and Northeastern states but a few tenths of a point better in the Southern and Midwestern States; they also have him averaging 2.2% in the Red States and 2.5% in the Blue States. Daily Kos additionally breaks support down by race with Nader getting 2% of whites, 1% of Latinos and "other" but no measurable black support. Even the New York Times posits that Nader is pulling votes from McCain.

Through the end of August, 2008, according to FEC P20000527, Nader has raised $3,090,538. Nader also qualified for $411,187.85 in primary federal matching funds according to the Federal Elections Commission.

This year Nader made it on the ballot in states containing 85.2% of the 2004 national popular vote cast, according to Richard Winger of Ballot Access News. Four years ago, he was only on the ballot before 50.1%, but the current status falls short of the 90.5% who could vote for him in 2000. There were 122,293,548 total votes cast for president in 2004. Therefore Nader will be on the ballot before an estimated 104,194,102 Americans (if turnout is the same from four years ago). If Nader pulls my estimated 2.5%, then my back of the envelope calculations if the election were held today give Nader 2,604,853 votes on election day. Those numbers are roughly five times his total four years ago and just shy of his 2000 vote.

J. Bradley Jansen was a legislative staffer for U.S. Congressman Ron Paul from 1997-2001. He is director of the Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights of the Liberty and Privacy Network (but views expressed here are his own), which is part of Bob Barr's Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances.

©2008 Bradley Jansen, all rights reserved. You must have written permission from the author in order to republish this work.
Published: Sunday, October 5, 2008
Last modified: Tuesday, October 7, 2008

The views expressed in this article are those of Bradley Jansen only and do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. Bradley Jansen is solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.

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