(Contributed by Nathan Westbrook)
When Ralph Nader announced he was entering the 2008 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton repeated the charge that he had "spoiled" the 2000 election for Al Gore and was responsible for Bush’s coming into office. When Bob Barr gained the nomination of the Libertarian Party last month, many pundits asked whether he might become a "spoiler" for John McCain. What is a spoiler supposed to be and by what reasoning are they identified?
In the case of Ralph Nader, the reasoning behind Clinton’s charge has the appearance of scapegoating. It is true that if all of those who voted for Nader had instead voted for Gore—and holding fixed all other votes as they were cast and recorded—Gore would have had more votes than Bush. However, looking at the vote totals for Florida in 2000, it is also true that if all of those who voted for Browne (or Buchanan or Phillips or Hagelin) had voted for Gore, then Gore would have had more votes than Bush. It might be that, on average, Nader voters were more likely to prefer Gore as a second option than were those who voted for the other minor party and independent candidates. However, the fact that any of these other groups of voters could also have swung the vote to Gore points to the real problem with spoiler arguments/accusations.
In most elections there are multiple candidates all competing with each other for as many votes as they can get. (But it is not just that there are a set number of voters who will vote and for whose votes the candidates are competing; the candidates are also all trying to "get out the vote.") And since the system is winner-take-all, every candidate covets the potential voters of every other candidate. In such a situation, every candidate wants to win (or so I am assuming here) and thus wants to spoil the election for every other candidate. Given this state of affairs, it would seem George W. Bush deserves Clinton’s ire as a "spoiler"—far more than Ralph Nader—since Bush took far more votes from Al Gore. Indeed, he took far more votes cast by registered Democrats!
Candidates
Votes
Vote %
Bush
2,909,176
49 %
Gore
2,907,451
49 %
Nader
96,837
2 %
Browne
18,856
0 %
Buchanan
17,356
0 %
Phillips
4,280
0 %
Hagelin
2,287
0 %
In this year’s election why shouldn’t Bob Barr or Ralph Nader claim that John McCain and Barack Obama are spoilers? If there is some asymmetry such that the "spoiler" label sticks only to underdogs and not to those who are favored in the polls, what principled account can be given of this asymmetry? The two major parties might want to perpetuate the assumption that a voter’s task is to choose between the two major party candidates. But this seems to me to be a false dichotomy.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comments:
I'm not sure what's wrong with use of the term "spoiler" here.
It seems clear that either Al Gore or George W. Bush was going to win the election. If a person wished to avoid the kind of government that many on the left feared, keeping George W. Bush from winning, and thereby helping Al Gore to win, seemed to be of paramount importance (although Nader disagreed, saying there was no significant difference between the two. When pressed, he gave Bush a "D" and Al Gore a "D+", I hope we no longer have to entertain the question of whether or not Mr. Nader was on target in this assessment).
Persuading people who would have otherwise voted for Gore had there been no notable Green-ish option to vote for Nader instead made it much more likely for Bush to be elected.
It seems that there is nothing incoherent about calling someone a "spoiler" if they had no chance of winning to speak of, but insisted on taking enough votes away from the center-left candidate to ensure victory for Bush.
It's not as if people "should" only vote for the two major parties, it's rather that we could have predicted the very small (but possibly influential) percentage of the vote Nader was going to get.
Jay J
Post a Comment