HOLDING KERRY TO 40%:

NADER'S NUMBERS: Ralph Nader keeps claiming he will take more votes away from Bush than from Kerry. Now comes a study of polls which puts the lie to that assertion. (Evan Derkacz, AlterNet)

The DontVoteRalph.net study looked at every poll — since Nader entered the race this time — that measured Bush and Kerry head-to-head as well as a three-way race with Bush, Kerry and Nader. Of the 37 such polls, Nader pulls votes directly from Kerry in 32 and four show no difference. Only one, a Fox News poll, shows Nader pulling votes from Bush by 1%. These results also happen to be consistent with exit polls from 2000 which showed that Nader voters would have voted for Gore twice as often as for Bush.

There is a certain "duh" factor to the study. Who seriously believes that Nader has any strong appeal to conservatives? Sure, his platform includes positions some fiscal conservatives might support; but his Green Party background, lack of Christian credentials, liberal social agenda, anti-corporate themes and reputation as a "tree hugger" all render him an unlikely choice for conservatives. Angry at Bush or not, the idea that conservatives will storm the polls for Nader is about as silly as the idea that Democrats will defect to, say, Pat Buchanan, because he opposed the Iraq war. In any case, intuitive arguments are just that; the poll numbers speak for themselves.

Well, Pat did get quite a few Democratic votes in FL...

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 2, 2004 10:01 AM