No way will Nader get 5% nationally... many liberals voted for Nader because they saw Gore as too moderate and little different to the ostensibly centrist Bush... Gore minimised the damage caused by Nader's by moving slightly to the left during the election (which he first did to defeat Bradley in the primaries)... the great desire within the democratic party simply to win will massively reduce the effect of a Nader run added to this Nader has no party structure and will have to get him slef on the ballot in all fifty states by himself... I would be surprised if Nader got 1/2 what he got last time and most Democrats and liberals who voted for Nader in 2000 will vote for the Dem nominee...
Lewis Nader did not only get goodish results where if would not hurt in Florida and New Hampshire he held the balance had he not run and only 1/3 of his votes gone to Gore… Gore would have won both states… Wisconsin, Minnesota (as you say that’s largely the La Duke factor), Oregon and Washington where all made much closer than they ever should have been by Naders run and in the dying days of the campaign he made last minute drives in marginal states across the country including Florida and New Hampshire… sometime I really doubt that this guy is not a republican plant… I really do….
GOPman I’m afraid that Kerry has a very good record on the environment and why would those to whom the environment is the most important issue in this election allow Bush to win?
If he runs I'd say he'll got on the ballot in about 30 states... and will get a little over 1% nationwide ... If Roy Moore runs (assuming an alliance of sorts between the Constitution and Reform Party's and no DOMA) then I imagine he'll get around 2.5-3% nation wide however I would imagine that will be concentrated in the south, but I would imagine in close states such as OH and NH even if he garners only a little under 1% that could be important...
Nader got 1,6% in Florida, after having polled there as high as 7% at one point (sorry, I don't have that poll, I've read that figure somehwere.) That's not a good result. It was indeed enough to easily take Gore over the top, but then there's lots of other factors you could blame just as easily.
Wherever the election was close he got much less than what polls had proclaimed. Yes, he still got 5,2% in Minnesota, 5% in Oregon, 4,1% in Washington, 3,9% in New Hampshire, 3,6% each in New Mexico amd Wisconsin. (I've looked 'em up before writing this post...)
These are results above his national average of 2,7%. The other 19 states and equivalents with over average Nader results are safe states. Note that there are a number of states where Nader was only a write-in candidate or not even that, so the average for ballot status states is higher. (Then again, he got 2,5% as a write-in candidate in Idaho).
The point is: The vast majority of potential Nader voters bottled out and returned to the "minor evil" Democrats even before the elections. Expect more of the same in close states, expect the Green vote to hold up slightly better where you can really use your ballot to send a message, because it won't hurt.
PS While clearly above the national average, the NH result is still Nader's worst in New England
Vermont 6,9
Massachusetts 6,4
Rhode Island 6,1
Maine 5,7
Connecticut 4,4
New Hampshire 3,9
And Connecticut was considered not safe by many pundits.
