I hope everyone will bear in mind that the evidence frequently contradicts the conventional wisdom about "spoilers" and Libertarians automatically hurting Republicans, and Greens automatically hurting Democrats. Neutral, professional polls this year in Nevada sometimes asked people about their intentions for US Senate if the Tea Party weren't on the ballot, and the results were that Tea Party voters were just as likely to vote for Harry Reid as Sharron Angle. Political science research set forth in Sam Lubell's "Future of American Politics" showed that in 1948, Harry Truman would have lost if Henry Wallace had not run against him as the Progressive Party nominee. The recent best-seller "Predictably Irrational" used experimental research to explain why the conventional wisdom about making choices is wrong. Both poll data, and election returns data, shows that Ralph Nader did not injure John Kerry in 2004. There is also hard election results data showing that Libertarians do not injure Republicans. --- On Wed, 11/3/10, Lloyd Mayer <lmayer@nd.edu> wrote: From: Lloyd Mayer <lmayer@nd.edu> Subject: [EL] Third Party Effects To: "Rick Hasen" <Rick.Hasen@lls.edu>, "Election Law" <election-law@mailman.lls.edu> Date: Wednesday, November 3, 2010, 5:29 AM One congressional race where the presence of a third party candidate may have been decisive is in my home district of Indiana-2.  The incumbent Democrat, Joe Donnelly, won by about two thousand, five hundred votes out of approximately 190,000 cast, narrowly edging out the Republican candidate.  A Libertarian candidate received almost 9,445 votes, or almost four times the margin of victory.  For exact figures, see http://64.255.123.76/indiana.htm. Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer Associate Professor Notre Dame Law School P.O. Box 780 Notre Dame, IN 46556-0780 Phone: (574) 631-8057 Fax: (574) 631-4197 Web Bio: http://law.nd.edu/faculty/lloyd-hitoshi-mayer SSRN Author Page: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=504775       Questions for Tomorrow How did Independents and third party candidates do, did their presence affect any D-R races, and what of "none of the above" in Nevada? What we know now is that independent Chafee won the R.I. gubernatorial race, Tancredo lost in Colorado, None of the above is polling under two percent in the Reid-Angle race, but it is doing much better than the "Tea Party" candidate in that race (who some allege was put there by Democrats to take votes away from Angle.) Posted by Rick Hasen at 09:07 PM -----Inline Attachment Follows----- _______________________________________________ election-law mailing list election-law@mailman.lls.edu http://mailman.lls.edu/mailman/listinfo/election-law

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