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Is Ralph Nader really a stalking horse for the Republicans? Will his presence in the 2004 equation help or hurt John Kerry? It’s anybody’s guess at this point — the polls are divided — but it’s certainly a question worth pursuing.
Nader, for his part, contends that his candidacy will actually help Democrats, while conventional wisdom (and the results of the 2000 election, where more Nader voters said they would have voted for Gore than Bush in a two-way race), suggests the opposite.
There are a couple of obvious data sources — polls and political contributions — that provide some quantifiable evidence of how Nader might tip the balance. Mark Simon, writing in today’s San Francisco Chronicle, takes up the challenge of reading poll data (at the critical state level, no less) and concludes that “In [four] key states, where mere dozens of votes could change the outcome and swing the electoral vote for president, early polls show Nader taking enough of Kerry’s potential supporters to make it possible for Bush to win the state.”
Wayne Slater of the Dallas Morning News followed the money trail yesterday, and found that nearly ten percent of the Nader contributors who have given at least $250 have a history of supporting George Bush, national GOP candidates or the Republican Party.
Do they actually want Nader to win, however? Slater asked and got this response from California business executive Charles Ashman: “No. I don’t believe that any more than Ralph Nader does. But I was offended to see this campaign to [sic] squelch him from being a candidate.” Ashman donated $1,000 to Nader and $2,000 to his choice for the Oval Office, George Bush.
Both of these local papers soundly beat the New York Times. Writing yesterday, Todd Purdum let Nader speak for himself, but also slipped in several digs at the candidate via quotes from former New York mayoral candidate Mark Green, Joan Claybrook of the Nader-founded watchdog group Public Citizen, and “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart. Purdum cites his paper’s own poll (showing Nader drawing support from Kerry nationally) deep in the piece, failing completely to give his readers the hard numbers that Simon and Slater do.
The moral of the story: Math may be hard, and in the end it may do no more than bear out the conventional wisdom, but that’s no excuse for pocketing the calculator.
–Bryan Keefer
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