SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Could Third Party Candidates Prove Clinton's Achilles Heel?
Polls show Clinton strengthening her lead over Republican rival Donald Trump, but Johnson and Stein decrease that lead
Aug 05, 2016
Here's the good news for Hillary Clinton: Three new polls this week show the Democratic presidential nominee strengthening her lead over Republican rival Donald Trump.
The bad news: Two of those polls--and a chunk of others recently--show that when the Libertarian Party's Gary Johnson and the Green Party's Jill Stein are included in a theoretical match-up, Clinton's lead drops, making, according to a headline in Politico, a potential "third-party headache" for the former secretary of state.
A Fox News poll released Wednesday shows Clinton with a 10-point lead over Trump, 49-39 percent.
A McClatchy-Marist poll released Thursday also shows Clinton with a double-digit lead over Trump, 48-33 percent.
And an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, also released Thursday, shows Clinton with a 9-point lead over Trump, 47- 38 percent.
When the Fox News poll presented a three-way match-up to include the Libertarian Party, Johnson got 12 percent, Clinton 44 percent, and Trump 35 percent. That makes Clinton's lead over Trump 9 points, a one-point drop compared to the two-way match.
When the McClatchy-Marist poll presented a four-way match-up to include Johnson and Stein, Clinton still came out on top getting 45 percent to Trump's 31 percent, while Johnson has 10 percent and Stein 6 percent. This scenario also drops Clinton's lead over Trump by one point.
Politico's Steven Shepard writes that's it's a small, but consistent pattern.
In the 15 major national polls conducted since the first night of the Republican convention last month that included both the two-way and four-way ballot tests, Clinton has had a smaller lead over Trump in nine, and her lead has been unchanged in five of them. In only in one of the surveys has Clinton's lead actually increased when Johnson and Stein are included.
Shepard goes on to ask: "Why is Johnson (and Stein, for that matter) drawing more from Clinton when he is a former Republican in a year when Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to defect to the third-party candidates?"
"Young voters," he continues, though noting that another possible factor is that the pollsters present the question after they've asked about the two-candidate match-up, and that could artificially bump up support for third party candidates.
At the Washington Post, Aaron Blake takes a closer look at the McClatchy-Marist poll, which shows Trump "losing young voters not just to Johnson, but also to Green Party nominee Jill Stein," as he got just 9 percent of the vote from those under 30. Clinton, in contrast, still lead the pack at 41 percent, while Johnson had 23 percent and Stein 16 percent.
Johnson and Stein "might not beat Trump with this demographic, but they can surely do some real damage to his prospects of winning," Blake adds.
Further backing that up, a new GenForward survey found that the majority of the 18- to 30-year-olds polled have a negative view of both Clinton and Trump.
The BBC's Rajini Vaidyanathan says that this is an election season "when many voters are crying out for an alternative," noting that there are Republicans who won't support Trump as well as supporters of Bernie Sanders who say they won't support Clinton.
So it's not just young voters with a distaste for the leading candidates, as previous polls have shown. Indeed, as the Fox News poll shows, more voters view both Clinton and Trump as unfavorable than favorable.
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Here's the good news for Hillary Clinton: Three new polls this week show the Democratic presidential nominee strengthening her lead over Republican rival Donald Trump.
The bad news: Two of those polls--and a chunk of others recently--show that when the Libertarian Party's Gary Johnson and the Green Party's Jill Stein are included in a theoretical match-up, Clinton's lead drops, making, according to a headline in Politico, a potential "third-party headache" for the former secretary of state.
A Fox News poll released Wednesday shows Clinton with a 10-point lead over Trump, 49-39 percent.
A McClatchy-Marist poll released Thursday also shows Clinton with a double-digit lead over Trump, 48-33 percent.
And an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, also released Thursday, shows Clinton with a 9-point lead over Trump, 47- 38 percent.
When the Fox News poll presented a three-way match-up to include the Libertarian Party, Johnson got 12 percent, Clinton 44 percent, and Trump 35 percent. That makes Clinton's lead over Trump 9 points, a one-point drop compared to the two-way match.
When the McClatchy-Marist poll presented a four-way match-up to include Johnson and Stein, Clinton still came out on top getting 45 percent to Trump's 31 percent, while Johnson has 10 percent and Stein 6 percent. This scenario also drops Clinton's lead over Trump by one point.
Politico's Steven Shepard writes that's it's a small, but consistent pattern.
In the 15 major national polls conducted since the first night of the Republican convention last month that included both the two-way and four-way ballot tests, Clinton has had a smaller lead over Trump in nine, and her lead has been unchanged in five of them. In only in one of the surveys has Clinton's lead actually increased when Johnson and Stein are included.
Shepard goes on to ask: "Why is Johnson (and Stein, for that matter) drawing more from Clinton when he is a former Republican in a year when Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to defect to the third-party candidates?"
"Young voters," he continues, though noting that another possible factor is that the pollsters present the question after they've asked about the two-candidate match-up, and that could artificially bump up support for third party candidates.
At the Washington Post, Aaron Blake takes a closer look at the McClatchy-Marist poll, which shows Trump "losing young voters not just to Johnson, but also to Green Party nominee Jill Stein," as he got just 9 percent of the vote from those under 30. Clinton, in contrast, still lead the pack at 41 percent, while Johnson had 23 percent and Stein 16 percent.
Johnson and Stein "might not beat Trump with this demographic, but they can surely do some real damage to his prospects of winning," Blake adds.
Further backing that up, a new GenForward survey found that the majority of the 18- to 30-year-olds polled have a negative view of both Clinton and Trump.
The BBC's Rajini Vaidyanathan says that this is an election season "when many voters are crying out for an alternative," noting that there are Republicans who won't support Trump as well as supporters of Bernie Sanders who say they won't support Clinton.
So it's not just young voters with a distaste for the leading candidates, as previous polls have shown. Indeed, as the Fox News poll shows, more voters view both Clinton and Trump as unfavorable than favorable.
Here's the good news for Hillary Clinton: Three new polls this week show the Democratic presidential nominee strengthening her lead over Republican rival Donald Trump.
The bad news: Two of those polls--and a chunk of others recently--show that when the Libertarian Party's Gary Johnson and the Green Party's Jill Stein are included in a theoretical match-up, Clinton's lead drops, making, according to a headline in Politico, a potential "third-party headache" for the former secretary of state.
A Fox News poll released Wednesday shows Clinton with a 10-point lead over Trump, 49-39 percent.
A McClatchy-Marist poll released Thursday also shows Clinton with a double-digit lead over Trump, 48-33 percent.
And an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, also released Thursday, shows Clinton with a 9-point lead over Trump, 47- 38 percent.
When the Fox News poll presented a three-way match-up to include the Libertarian Party, Johnson got 12 percent, Clinton 44 percent, and Trump 35 percent. That makes Clinton's lead over Trump 9 points, a one-point drop compared to the two-way match.
When the McClatchy-Marist poll presented a four-way match-up to include Johnson and Stein, Clinton still came out on top getting 45 percent to Trump's 31 percent, while Johnson has 10 percent and Stein 6 percent. This scenario also drops Clinton's lead over Trump by one point.
Politico's Steven Shepard writes that's it's a small, but consistent pattern.
In the 15 major national polls conducted since the first night of the Republican convention last month that included both the two-way and four-way ballot tests, Clinton has had a smaller lead over Trump in nine, and her lead has been unchanged in five of them. In only in one of the surveys has Clinton's lead actually increased when Johnson and Stein are included.
Shepard goes on to ask: "Why is Johnson (and Stein, for that matter) drawing more from Clinton when he is a former Republican in a year when Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to defect to the third-party candidates?"
"Young voters," he continues, though noting that another possible factor is that the pollsters present the question after they've asked about the two-candidate match-up, and that could artificially bump up support for third party candidates.
At the Washington Post, Aaron Blake takes a closer look at the McClatchy-Marist poll, which shows Trump "losing young voters not just to Johnson, but also to Green Party nominee Jill Stein," as he got just 9 percent of the vote from those under 30. Clinton, in contrast, still lead the pack at 41 percent, while Johnson had 23 percent and Stein 16 percent.
Johnson and Stein "might not beat Trump with this demographic, but they can surely do some real damage to his prospects of winning," Blake adds.
Further backing that up, a new GenForward survey found that the majority of the 18- to 30-year-olds polled have a negative view of both Clinton and Trump.
The BBC's Rajini Vaidyanathan says that this is an election season "when many voters are crying out for an alternative," noting that there are Republicans who won't support Trump as well as supporters of Bernie Sanders who say they won't support Clinton.
So it's not just young voters with a distaste for the leading candidates, as previous polls have shown. Indeed, as the Fox News poll shows, more voters view both Clinton and Trump as unfavorable than favorable.
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.