Why are people giving Johnson 4% when he has consistently polled at 7? Wouldn't that be pretty bad for the LP given the field?
I gave him 4% because third party candidates tend to underperform on election day. Most holdouts accept that either the D or R will be President and vote accordingly. While this election is far from the norm, I still expect that pattern to hold up.That's just not true. There is no such pattern. In recent presidential elections for which there's a third party candidate significant enough to be included in most polls, their polling #s in October pretty much match their performance on election day. Look at Perot '92, Perot '96, and Nader '00. What they were polling in October is what they got on election day. If anything, Perot narrowly beat his poll #s in both '92 and '96. Even Anderson '80 didn't have much dropoff from October to November. His drop mostly took place before that.
Poll
