> Well, your prediction of a Nader defeat in an actual two-way race
> between Nader and Gore, Nader and Bush, Nader and Buchanan, etc. is a
> hypothesis. By your logic, it must be more irrelevant than a finding
> that Nader was the Condorcet winner in 2000, as Barry C. Burden's
> finding is based on facts of voter preferences collected from the
> National Election study data ("Nader beats Buchanan [659-240], Gore
> [527-500], and Bush [562-491], thus making him the Condorcet winner,"
> Barry C. Burden, "Minor Parties in the 2000 Presidential Election,"
> 2-3,
> <http://psweb.sbs.ohio-state.edu/faculty/hweisberg/conference/
> burdosu.pdf>), whereas yours is based on your assertion alone. :-)
I wrote the author of that study and asked the obvious question:
"I've been pointed to your paper, _Minor Parties in the 2000
Presidential Election_, by someone claiming it supports his assertion
that "under the Condorcet version of Proportional Representation Ralph
Nader would have won the Presidential election". Would you say that's a
fair conclusion to draw from your paper?"
Here's his reply:
"That is not the conclusion I draw in the final version of my paper (full citation below). I do, however, conclude that Bush was not the Condorcet winner. This is apparently the first time since the advent of scientific surveys that the winner of the presidential election did not also beat the other candidates in head to head matchups, a startling finding in itself.
So while Mitch Cohen was wrong in his claim (I gather there are different versions of the paper--perhaps he read an earlier version), Yoshie is on to something in saying:
> The unprecedented divergence also indicates that the left-wing
> politics like Nader and the Green Party's had much broader appeal than
> the proportion of actual votes for Nader in 2000 might make one think.
> Good news for Nader, the Green Party, and
> activists/organizers/intellectuals on the left in general.
I don't see that it's good news for Nader or the Greens--that they can't hold their voters is an indication of failure and incompetence--but I agree that's it's good for the left generally.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that bad news for Nader and the Greens is probably good news for the left generally--but that's just me,
John A