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Jill Stein Blew It for Clinton. Will She Do It to Harris, Too? | Opinion

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may have dropped out of the presidential race, but that by no means should lead to the conclusion third party candidates won’t impact the outcome in November.
While it was unclear whether Kennedy would have pulled more votes from former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris, what is clear is that the remaining third-party candidates with ballot access in the swing states, present far more electoral jeopardy to Harris than to the former president. Now, with a presidential race that in all likelihood will come down to one or two percentage points in four or five swing states, third-party candidates that siphon one or two points from a candidate could be absolutely decisive. Most political polling puts the ceiling of Trump’s support at 47 percent to 48 percent of the vote. For Trump to win, he must secure a plurality of the votes by virtue of votes for a third-party candidate or candidates denying his opponent a majority.
Little focus has been put on certain third-party candidates, specifically Jill Stein, whose Green Party effort in 2016 is largely viewed as having been responsible for Hillary Clinton’s loss of the presidency. Given the fact that Stein’s share of voters in 2016 exceeded Trump’s margin of victory over Hillary Clinton, Clinton would have won Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin and thus the presidency, if Stein had not been in the race.
In 2016, Trump’s margin of victory in Pennsylvania was 44,292 voters. Stein’s vote was 49,941. In Michigan, Trump’s margin was 10,704 and Stein’s vote was 51,463. In Wisconsin, Trump’s margin was 22,748 and Stein’s vote was 31,072.
Unfortunately for Kamala Harris, Jill Stein is back in the 2024 election, having not run in 2020. Why she is back is a good question. She has absolutely no chance of even getting a single electoral vote. However, she has some chance of playing spoiler in a way that would do what she did in 2016 and directly cause Trump to regain the presidency.
Let’s look at some of the numbers. In 2016, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin—otherwise known as the Blue Wall—Stein’s campaign specifically targeted disaffected Democratic voters, especially those who had supported Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. When all the focus was on Robert F Kennedy Jr., the question was who he would siphon more votes from. However, it is very clear that Stein siphons votes from Harris in a much bigger way than Trump, given that she is to the left of Harris on a number of issues. If her small but significant vote remains close to how she performed in 2016, she could very well be responsible for the disaster of another Trump presidency.
It is particularly noteworthy is that in those three states Biden’s share of the vote in 2020 rose relative to Clinton’s in 2016, while Trump’s vote share remained about the same. It would be fair to conclude that with far fewer third-party votes in 2020, Biden was able to take a disproportionate share of the 2016 third-party vote to narrowly win those three battleground states over Trump. Polling showed that in 2020 Biden had a better than 2 to 1 advantage over Trump in gaining the vote of 2016 third-party voters in those key battleground states.
The number of likely voters who are not satisfied with either Harris or Trump is still large enough to be a swing factor in the election. It is hard for many to understand that any voter would essentially lodge a protest vote—a throwaway ballot—in such a close contest, but such voters do exist even in 2024, as they did in 2020 when Jill Stein was not on the ballot. The candidate that received the third highest vote total, with over 1 percent of the vote in the swing states, was the Libertarian Party candidate Jo Jorgensen. That candidate was so little known that when I have asked informed voters if they had ever heard of her, not one knew even if she was a man or a woman. (Answer: a woman). So even totally unknown third-party candidates can garner enough of the vote to sway an election. It should be noted that the Libertarian candidate in 2016, Gary Johnson, received even more of the vote than Jill Stein did that year.
There will be a Libertarian candidate on the ticket this cycle. However, it’s unclear Libertarian what candidate they draw votes from. Some insight from a recent Pennsylvania poll highlighted on Mark Halperin’s show, 2 Way, conducted by Wick Insights, underscores the danger for Harris. When the question was put to voters in a Trump/Harris head-to-head, the race was tied, but when both Stein and the Libertarian candidate, Chase Oliver, were added to the survey question, Trump led by 1 percent.
Stein has already gained ballot access in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, while also being on the ballots in Arizona and North Carolina. Exacerbating the electoral jeopardy for Harris is that Cornel West, the black activist and anti-Israel proponent, is on the ballot in both North Carolina and Wisconsin. Crucially, in addition, the Michigan court of appeals has recently ruled in West’s favor to be on the ballot in that state. Michigan already posed a serious challenge for Harris given the state’s large Arab population’s strongly held views in opposition to the current administration’s Gaza policy. West provides an alternative to voting for Trump while depriving Harris of a traditionally Democratic leaning block. Tipping the voting balance in Michigan and Wisconsin alone would be enough to allow Trump to prevail in the Electoral College vote.
In looking at Biden’s margin over Trump in 2020, and taking away just two-thirds of the Stein vote in 2016 from those margins, would cause Biden to lose Wisconsin in 2024 and would cut his margin over Trump in half in Pennsylvania. Of course, based on the assumption that the Midwest’s Blue Wall holds is by far the most likely the difference between a Biden and Trump presidency. Losing Wisconsin under that scenario would win the election for Trump. Fortunately for Harris, Wisconsin has been polling stronger for her than other swing states, and unlike the case when Biden was running, she has opened possible paths to win sunbelt swing states.
Helping potentially counteract the West/Stein factor is that a Michigan judge refused to allow RFK Jr. to withdraw his name from that state’s ballot, which could drain away some Trump voters now that Kennedy has endorsed the former president.
Wisconsin party officials recognize there will be a 1 to 2 percent third-party vote, but feel confident it will not significantly impact the Harris results. The current swing-state polls are all over the place, certainly trending better for Harris, but given almost all the polls are within the margin of error, undecided voters ultimately deciding they can’t vote for either of the major party candidates would create real peril for Harris.
Voting for a third-party candidate may sound like a great exercise in citizen democracy and voter choice, but its impact may well determine if the country maintains its democratic principles or hands its reigns to a candidate who has proven to be a solidly anti-democratic figure. So, if you know anyone thinking of voting for a third-party candidate, particularly Jill Stein or Cornel West. make sure they understand they are not simply expressing support for the Green Party, or registering a protest vote on Gaza, or being able to say they did what a “double hater” of both major candidates would naturally do, but that they would be as responsible as anyone for re-electing Donald Trump.
Tom Rogers is executive chairman of Oorbit Gaming and Entertainment, an editor-at-large for Newsweek, the founder of CNBC and a CNBC contributor. He also established MSNBC, is the former CEO of TiVo, a member of Keep Our Republic (an organization dedicated to preserving the nation’s democracy). He is also a member of the American Bar Association Task Force on Democracy.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.

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