Topic: Election 2008
Election Night Cheat Sheet
Battleground 2008 State Information about Ralph Nader, Bob Barr and Cynthia McKinney
by Bradley Jansen
(libertarian)
Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Politics is a strange business, and even by those standards, this has been a bizarre year.  While the campaign season began with a great deal of hope and excitement with the spark lit by Ron Paul, the tweedle dee, tweedle dum final choices of the two main parties leave Constitutionalists cold.  I examined the national and various state polls for previous columns.  Most political commentators believe we are either on the verge of a Democratic landslide or that the recent gains by Republican John McCain may harbinger an upset in enough battleground states to win an electoral college majority.  While Obama may rack up big wins in solidly Democratic states, McCain could win a plurality of a majority of the electoral votes in enough states.  Alternatively, the recent polling swing of undecideds to McCain may recreate the scenario in 1980 which went into the final days a toss-up only to see a shift of undecideds to Reagan tip dozens of states his way. 

While the average of the latest national polls gives Barack Obama 51.4% to John McCain's 44.0%, polls, of course, must be taken with a grain of salt.  Based on a compilation of various sources, there are about a dozen battleground states that could go either way.  Libertarian candidate Bob Barr is on the ballot in all of those states, independent Ralph Nader is on most of them, and Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney is on the ballot for half of them.  Since there have never been any state polls for Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin, he is not considered in this analysis. 

As I outlined in an earlier analysis, Nader's support has been slipping in nearly all of the apples-to-apples polls while Barr's support has been rising.  Since there is no good data explaining these trends, I can only speculate that those on the Left are more content with the prospects of an Obama presidency than limited government supporters are with the thought of a McCain one.  Barr has been active on the financial crisis gripping the country which has served him well.  His explanations in a recent commentary proffered:
We must act quickly to restore integrity to the financial marketplace by enforcing laws and regulations against fraud and other misbehavior. We also must correct policies that led to Wall Street’s debacle. Congress must rein in the Federal Reserve, since the latter’s ‘easy money’ policy helped create the housing bubble that just popped. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac must be privatized and Congress must end its interference in the lending markets.
Politicians, as much as Wall Street traders, were responsible for the current mess. The people must hold elected officials accountable.
No other presidential choice offers the policy prescriptions aimed at addressing the root causes, not just window-dressing of symptoms. 

Here is my cheat sheet of likely battleground states with information of the main third party candidates on the ballot and their history of support in the state (and how they may affect the electoral outcomes):

State (Electoral Votes)
Comments
Nader
Barr
McKinney
Arizona (10)
Obama win indicates landslide
2% (August)
7% (June)
No data
Colorado (9)
McCain aims to hold GOP state
1%
4% (September)
2% (August)
Florida (27)
(insert your own chad joke here)
2.5% (September)
2.5% (September)
1% (September)
Georgia (15)
Barr well-known in home state
Not on the ballot4%
Not on the ballot
Indiana (11)R state but Obama neighbor
Not on the ballot2%
Not on the ballot
Montana (3)
Ron Paul's best November state
Not on the ballot1%
Not on the ballot
Missouri (11)
Demographically bellweather
1% (September)
4% (September)
Not on the ballot
New Mexico (5)
Likely Dem pickup from 2004
No data
2% (September)
No data
Nevada (5)
Showed summer 3rd party interest
2% (September)
3% (September)
3% (August)
North Carolina (15)
Libertarians may get ballot status
Not on the ballot
3%
Not on the ballot
North Dakota (3)
No poll data available
No data
No data
Not on the ballot
Ohio (20)
My homestate, classic bellweather
2%
1%
1% (September)
Pennsylvania (21)
Must for McCain to compensate loss of other Bush states
7% (August)
3% (September)
Not on the ballot
Virginia (13)
Trending Democratic
1% (June)
3% (September)
No data

Some will (rightly) see that public rejected the record of the trillions of dollars added to the national debt under the Bush Administrations, the lying to justify warfarism, the contempt for the rule of law, the avoidance of accountability, etc.  Others will try to excuse this deplorable record and blame someone else.  Enter Bob Barr.  While Bob Barr himself has dismissed the idea of him acting as a spoiler, the simple fact is that should the Republicans lose today, they will look for a scapegoat.  Time magazine explores this idea too.
 
UPDATE:  Returns are still incomplete and unofficial, but at this point, it appears that Barr's votes "cost" McCain a few states (allowing the argument that Barr's votes should have gone to McCain--not that this is necessarily true), such as Indiana, North Carolina and Missouri.
 
This from Richard Winger:
 Minor Party, Independent Presidential Candidates May Have Tipped 4 States
November 4th, 2008
Apparently, as of 10:20 Pacific time, there are four states in which no presidential candidate won as much as 50% of the vote. According to this excellent Associated Press website, those 4 states are:

1. North Carolina: Obama 49.9%, McCain 49.5%, Barr .6%

2. Montana: McCain 48.6%, Obama 48.1%, Paul 2.1%, Nader .9%, Barr .3%

3. Indiana: Obama 49.9%, McCain 49.0%, Barr 1.1%

4. Missouri: McCain 49.6%, Obama 49.1%, Nader .6%, Barr .4%, Baldwin .3%.

As the night goes on, these percentages will change slightly.
 

©2008 Bradley Jansen, all rights reserved. You must have written permission from the author in order to republish this work.
Published: Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Last modified: Wednesday, November 5, 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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Reader Comments:

Posted By: Bradley in DC
Date: 2008-11-04 12:30:38

Results are in from Guam (no electoral votes, but a straw poll) with Obama getting 20,120
 votes, McCain 11,940
 and Barr 212. 

http://www.guampdn.com/article/20081105/NEWS03/811050339/-1/NEWSFRONT2

The LP vote is up substantially from last time:  In 2004 it voted Bush 21,490; Kerry 11,781; Nader 196; Badnarik 67.  Guam has picked the president every election since it started in 1980.  

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Posted By: Bradley in DC
Date: 2008-11-04 13:09:20

AP reports on Barr's swing state strategy:

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hwyTbJZo9EBmGzGJluTtY70jSrPgD947LUFO1

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Posted By: Nancy
Date: 2008-11-04 18:07:25

Hey there. I voted for Nader, and I am not a big fan of big government - and please don't ask me to explain that since he was against the bailout! Anyway, I think that Barr has trended up because most of the undecideds are fiscal conservatives leaning towards McCain, including Evangelicals who might eschew his libertarian leaning ways as a ruse since he was once part of the Moral Majority. The other reason is because if you are a Nader supporter, and knowing his history as a spoiler in the 2000 election, any Democrat or "liberal" who finds out you are voting for Nader will pounce on you and harass you. It's like we are in the closet! I'm in California and I'm afraid of putting a bumper sticker on my car for fear it will get keyed. The media belittles us - case in point a recent story in left-leaning Huff Post. I haven't heard about any Republican pressure on folks who plan to vote for Barr.

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Posted By: James R.
Date: 2008-11-04 22:31:57

Over at Bob Barr 2008 they're censoring my posts just for pointing out that Barr did about as well as Badnarik. Why does the truth hurt them so?

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