Are Johnson and Stein helping or hurting Clinton and Trump - an Analysis

[CajunBlazer]

Perhaps you have wondered how the inclusion of the Green and Libertarian Party candidates, Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, is affecting the race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. It is something I have wondered about for some time so I finally decided to try analyze that situation. This is this methodology I devised.

With two 3rd party candidates siphoning off votes from the both of the two major party candidates it is difficult to determine whether, for example, Johnson helping or hurting Hillary? Or whether Johnson is helping or hurting Trump? However, we can take some examples of what I will call “paired polls” of the national race and those in some of the states, make some common sense assumptions, and come to some reasonable conclusions about who is hurting or helping who.

When I talk about “paired polls” I am referring to situations where polling organizations ask their sample populations their preferences in both the two person race and the four person race.

Example 1:

The following are the results of a set of paired polls for the State of Pennsylvania conducted by Suffolk University between 7/25 and 7/27:

Clinton 44, Trump 44, Tie

Clinton 43, Trump 39, Johnson 5, Stein 1 Clinton +4

Notice that when the 3rd party candidates are added, Clinton's percentage drops by 1% (44% - 43%) and Trump’s percentage drops by 5% (44% - 39%). Already we can see that Hillary does better against Trump in the 4 person race, but how do we figure out which of the third party candidates is helping her the most? Now let's make a common sense assumption - that Stein is siphoning off votes only from Clinton in a 4 person race. (Rational; It seems highly unlikely people who vote for Stein in a 4 person would vote for Trump in a 2 person race. I could see Stein voters sitting out a two person race or writing in a candidate, but I can’t see them voting for Trump. This might not be a perfect assumption, but it good enough for our purposes.) Note the total percentage of voters in each of the two types of races both add up to 88%. So it doesn’t look like any voters are moving to the undecided or voting other columns when moving from the 4 person race to the 2 person race so this factor can be ignored.

Proceeding with our assumption, we add Stine's voters to Hillary's to reduce the 4 person race to a imaginary three person race:

Clinton 43, Trump 39, Johnson 5, Stein 1 Clinton +4 (4 person race)

To: Clinton 44, Trump 39, Johnson 5 Clinton +5 (3 person race)

Now let's compare the three person race (above) the two person race (Clinton and Trump):

Clinton 44, Trump 44, Tie

Clinton 44, Trump 39, Johnson 5 Clinton +5

When Johnson is included, Clinton's total decreases none at all (44% to 44%) while Trump's total decreases by 5% (44% to 39%)

Conclusions: In this set of paired polls, Johnson’s presence in the race hurts only Trump when we assume that Stein hurts only Clinton with her candidacy. We can also see that Johnson hurts Trump far more than Stein hurts Clinton.

You can use this this basic analysis technique on any of the paired polls you can find on line. However, this is basic example and some paired polls can be more difficult analyze and additional assumptions sometimes need to be made. Examples of the analysis of other paired polls along with an overall conclusion can be found in the original article - follow this link:

Are Johnson and Stein helping or hurting Clinton and Trump - an Analysis

[Evergreen Emerald]

1. I think Jill Stein helped Clinton this week

Her behavior gave people pause to reconsider their support for her as an alternative.

[CajunBlazer]

2. That's a good possibility - she wasn't lurking around the Republican Convention

Then again she was probably trying to get publicity for her campaign and pick up disaffected liberal votes. Let's see what shows up in the polls.

[Princess Turandot]

3. No change to the 'undecided' in the two Suffolk scenarios?

12% of the vote is unaccounted for (i.e. undecided or other or not voting) whether there are two or four candidates in the poll question?

[CajunBlazer]

6. Yea, that's right

12% in both the 2 person and the 4 person polls are undecided, not voting, or maybe writing in someone - which is equivalent to not voting. The good thing is that there is the same percentage of voters (88%) in both polls.

There is additional difficulty when there are a greater percentage of voters in the 4 person poll than the 2 person poll. (Some of those voters in the 4 person poll are opting out, becoming undecided in the 2 person poll.) Then you have to make an additional assumption as to whether those folks were Stein voters or Johnson voters or a portion of each. And you have to make that additional assumption based on nothing but your gut feeling, so there a good chance of error creeping into the analysis.

If you go to the article itself, Example 2 deals with such a case. You can see how I handled it.

You know you have to be a wonk to even be interested in this.

[DURHAM D]

4. Do you have a list of states where Stein is on the ballot? nt

[CajunBlazer]

7. Last I looked she was on the ballot in 20 states

but her campaign had was working towards having her on the ballot in all 50 states by the election.

I looked it up for you - they are on 24 states, working on ballot access in 23 states (probably means they are trying to collect enough signatures on petitions) and have lawsuits filed (they probably missed the deadlines) in 3 states.

You can see which states or which on a map on this link:

http://www.gp.org/ballotaccess

You can see the

[charlyvi]

5. Once we get closer to election day

and it becomes obvious that Stein or Johnson have absolutely no chance of winning, many of those Stein/Johnson voters will revert back to the major parties. After all, who wants to vote for someone who will have no influence whatever on any issue important to the majority of folks in this country?

[CajunBlazer]

8. I agree with you on Stein

Johnson may be a different story. Johnson may become more relevant manage to get on the debate stage with Hillary and Trump. If the Libertarian candidate can achieve at least 15% in 5 preselected polls conducted before the first debate scheduled for September 26th, Johnson can join the debates and gain much needed standing and media coverage which could in turn lead to still higher poll numbers.

[charlyvi]

9. True.

So far, however, I don't see Johnson doing it. Maybe the Khan episode will cause some Trumpers to go over to him though. Which is fine.......and I really, really have my doubts that Trump will do the debates. Josh Marshall over at TPM has some good stuff on this. Twitter thinks he is trying to set up an exit as well.

[CajunBlazer]

10. I'm not sure of that

I have seen Republican talking heads claim that only the debates offer a chance for Trump to gain significantly on Hillary. They think Trump would be the big bear who will "maul" Hillary.

I don't know that is accurate either. Hillary is a very good debater and you can bet she will be more than ready to counter any of Trump's offish attacks. Plus the last time Trump tangled with a strong woman, he left with deep scratch and bite wounds himself.

[charlyvi]

11. She knows how to press his buttons

She knows how to drive him absolutely up a wall; in which case, he would explode in a blizzard of petty name calling and infantile braggadocio. All she would have to do is patiently let him finish then ask, do you think this man is temperamentally fit to be President?