538: "Down-Ballot Democrats Should Go After Johnson And Stein Voters" [View all]

[Attorney in Texas]

Down-Ballot Democrats Should Go After Johnson And Stein Voters:

The third-party vote is unusually big this year — bigger than in any presidential election since 1992. Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein regularly combine for more than 10 percent of the vote in national polls. But despite those relatively strong showings, we know little about the partisan makeup of Johnson’s and Stein’s voters; there are enough of them to be worth tracking but too few to make up a meaningful sample in most individual surveys. Which party these voters favor outside of the presidential race could affect down-ballot races for the U.S. Senate and House.

We can learn a bit more about these voters from new data that Morning Consult has shared with FiveThirtyEight; it’s aggregated from the firm’s national tracking polls from Aug. 1 through Aug. 20. Johnson’s voters are very slightly more favorably disposed toward Republicans. Stein’s voters are overwhelmingly more favorable toward Democrats. If these voters shun the two major parties at the top of the ticket but choose between the two in down-ballot races, they could help Democrats in congressional races.

When respondents were asked which party’s candidate they would back in their district’s U.S. House race, only 53 percent of Johnson backers said the Republican; 46 percent said they would vote for the Democrat. (They were not offered the option of a third-party candidate.)1 That’s a bit surprising — I would guess that a Libertarian candidate would draw support disproportionately from the GOP. But the small Republican edge among Johnson supporters means that, as a group, they would barely affect down-ballot races if they voted for a major-party nominee. Considering that 9 percent of all voters in the Morning Consult data said they were supporting Johnson for president, the 7-point edge in the U.S. House question means that Johnson voters are adding a little less than two-thirds of a percentage point of support to the Republican margin in the national House vote.

Stein supporters, meanwhile, overwhelmingly favor Democratic House candidates (not surprisingly). Democrats win the House ballot among Stein voters 74 percent to 25 percent. That nearly 50-point margin means that although just 4 percent of all voters are backing Stein, they add 2 percentage points to the aggregate Democratic margin in House races.

Great article. Well worth reading (and well worth executing the suggested strategy).