Octoberfest

Bust Your Stein!!

During last night's MSNBC pundit marathon, one of them off-camera announced that Jill Stein had come into view. There, again, was the still photo from the 2015 RT meet with Putin and Flynn, with Stein's profile in the foreground. Today, there's real news. The main point made by the pundit was that Stein cost Hillary the election, since the difference between Hillary and Orange Julius Caesar in the three Blue states (PA, MI, WI) was less than Stein's votes. Well, yes. But...

Not quite. Here's the Wiki table of the results. Note that Johnson polled about 3 times as many votes as Stein nationally and he got more votes than she did in each state. The net (or gross, as you prefer) is that Trump got ~63,000,000 and NotTrump got ~71,000,000. And most of that difference was Johnson+Stein (Johnson alone eclipsed Hillary's margin), not Hillary.

What would have happened if there were no Johnson or Stein? As a first approximation, let's assume that Johnson voters would vote for Orange Julius Caesar and Stein for Hillary. Some of both would have not voted, naturally, but this is a speculative thought experiment.

So far as the Three Blue States go, yes, Stein "took" enough away from Hillary to make up the difference with Orange Julius Caesar. But, of course, Johnson polled about 3 times the vote as Stein in those states, so having no third-party votes wouldn't have changed the result.

The following states would have flipped.

To Orange Julius Caesar:
Colorado
Maine (at-lg.)
Minnesota
Nevada
New Hampshire

To Hillary:
none

In the end, Hillary was, net, the benficiary of third-party, just not enough.