General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Reminder: HRC lost the Electoral College by less than 100K votes spread over 3 states. [View all]There are a number of reasons she lost, and claiming only one, or only two are legitimate and worthy of discussion is selective cherry picking.
It is like 3 people shooting a person all at once, at the same time, fatal with all 3 combined, but not fatal individually. Then a person comes along and only blames (selectively) one of the 3 shooters.
I never once said that the amount of Stein voters was not enough alone to tip the election in those 3 states, but to pluck them out and ONLY blame them, in a vacuum, is not a valid method of thorough examination when there were other forces that were of sufficient size to tip it as well.
There also is a counterpoint to this discussion of 3rd parties, another one that few ever talk about, one that works the OPPOSITE direction of Stein voters.
Gary Johnson, the RW Libertarian (who grabbed a staggering almost 4.5 million votes, and other RW 3rd party and RW Indy candidates (like Evan McMullin) who vastly outperformed Stein, and who drew heavily from the Trump vote.
As stated, Johnson alone got almost 4.5 million votes (millions more than any Libertarian candidate in US presidential election history. Johnson in 2012 only got 1.275 million votes, so it is likely that 3.2 million or so of those Johnson votes came right from Trump) , to Stein's 1.46 million. The RWer indy McMullin, who only ran in 11 states, got more than half of Stein's totals at 732,000 (and unlike Stein, almost ALL of those votes came directly from Trump). Another RWer, Darrell Castle got 203K votes. Rocky De La Fuente, another RWer got 33K.
Add up those RW 3rd party/indy totals and you have around 5.5 million RW votes, with around 4.1 million or so likely drawn straight from Trump.
Stein probably drew 500,000 to 550,000 votes straight from from Clinton (and 150,000 or so from Trump, so to be completely fair, that actually lowers the Stein impact even more at the end of the day), based off pre election, and post election exit polls.
Take the higher number (550K) and add another 50,000 from very small minor other LWer 3 parties like the Socialist Gloria La Riva, and you have 600,000 lost Clinton votes.
The RW 3rd parties took at around 3.5 million MORE from Trump than LW 3rd parties took from Clinton based off who would have actually voted for either Trump or Clinton in reality), and if you go just off the pure vote totals, the RW minor candidates got almost 4 million more (around 5.5 million versus 1.53 million) votes than the LW minor candidates.
This pattern holds true for all 3 states (MI, WI, PA) in discussion
In Michigan, 198,667 RW listed 3rd party/indy voters, versus 51,436 LW 3rd party listed (all Stein) voters (almost 4 times more RW minor part voters than than Stein LW voters)
In Wisconsin, 132,193 RW listed 3rd party/indy voters, versus 32,842 LW 3rd party listed (mostly all Stein) voters (more than 4 times more RW minor party voters than than Stein, etc LW voters)
In Pennsylvania, 175,061 RW listed 3rd party/indy voters, versus 56,004 LW 3rd party listed (mostly all Stein) voters (more than 3 times more RW minor party voters than than Stein, etc LW voters)
So, to sum it up, if you are going to look at 3rd party draw-offs, you cannot just take ONE candidate and ignore all the rest. If you removed ALL third party candidates in 2016, and then held the election only between Trump and Hillary, given how those 3rd party/indy voters would have voted between only Trump and Clinton, and how many would not have voted at all, Trump not only would have still won the EC, he would have won the popular vote as well. He lost a shedload more votes (around 3.65 million more, when you add in those 150K Stein voters who would have voted Trump) to the 3rd party/indies than Clinton did.