Democratic Primaries
In reply to the discussion: Electoral College Map...we need a centrist candidate to win the rustbelt to stop Trump. [View all]BlueWI
(1,736 posts)The Green Party got more votes in 2016 compared to 2012 in WI (about 24,000 more votes, 31,000 total).
Trump got more votes in 2016 than Romney in 2012 by a small margin (about 2,700 votes out of 1.4 million). Essentially, there were the same number of Republican votes in both elections.
Clinton received fewer votes in 2016 than Obama in 2012 in WI (about 238,000 fewer). And arguably, she's a more centrist candidate.
So why does the Green Party, in your reasoning, get all the credit for the loss, even though the Green Party votes were much fewer in number than the dropoff in votes for the Democratic nominee?
Sure, if every Green Party vote went to Clinton, Clinton would have won. But that didn't happen, as it would never happen. In fact, Trump was probably hurt more by the Libertarian Party in 2016 (104,000 votes versus 20,000 in 2012) than Clinton was hurt by the Green Party in 2016 (31,000 votes versus 7,000 in 2012).
It is persistently attractive to many to make the Green Party the scapegoat, but would be easier to earn back 12% of voters who abandoned the Democratic ticket in 2016 than to earn 100% of Green Party voters, who are a small margin of the electorate to begin with.
primary today, I would vote for: Undecided