The Importance of Jill Stein

On Monday, when I listed some of the steps Gary Johnson would need to take if he hoped to be truly competitive, I neglected to mention one important additional factor. Not so much something that Johnson himself could control, but an outside factor that could nevertheless influence the election and therefore his, or Clinton’s or Trump’s, chances of winning—the candidacy of Jill Stein.

Stein, the Green Party nominee, is polling somewhere between two and six percent in national surveys, and as things now stand has no chance of making it onto the debate stage, let alone winning the Presidency. If the chances of Johnson winning are equivalent to me being struck by lightning at the same time a comet crashes into the Earth, Stein’s chances are roughly equivalent to me being struck by lightning while being eaten by a shark—at the same time the Earth is hit by a comet being ridden by little green men.

Nevertheless, Stein’s current 3.1% RealClearPolitics polling average is respectable for a third-party (fourth-party?) candidate, and is marginally better than the 2.7% Ralph Nader ender up pulling nationally in 2000. The lessons of that election show how meaningful minor-party candidacies can be in elections, even when they come nowhere close to actually winning.

Just as the Johnson-Weld ticket serves as an attractive rallying point for disaffected Republicans and conservative independents who reject both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Stein and the Green Party serve as an attractive, principled place to go for disaffected Democrats and liberal independents who reject Trump out of hand, but see Clinton as not sufficiently liberal, and just as dishonest and unfit for the Presidency as Trump. Even though Johnson is actively reaching out to these same voters, many will feel more ideologically at home with the liberal activists of the Green Party. The challenge for Stein becomes the need to spread the word about her candidacy and increase name recognition among these voters, particularly if Johnson makes the debate stage and she does not.

Still, with Johnson’s Republican credentials and past conservative record as governor, it’s hard to predict just how many Sanders voters will end up voting Libertarian and how many will support Stein. And if she manages to take a significant number of votes away from Clinton, the overall margin necessary to win both individual states and the national popular vote is decreased even further. A candidate winning only 30% of the vote could conceivably win several states and come close to winning the popular vote outright, adding even more unpredictability to an already crazy year.