The 2000 presidential race included two major party candidates—Republican George W. Bush and
Democrat Al Gore—and two prominent third party candidates—Ralph Nader of the Green Party
and Pat Buchanan of the Reform Party. While it is often presumed that Nader spoiled the 2000
election for Gore by siphoning away votes that would have been cast for him in the absence of a
Nader candidacy, we show that this presumption is rather misleading. While Nader voters in 2000
were somewhat pro-Democrat and Buchanan voters correspondingly pro-Republican, both types
of voters were surprisingly close to being partisan centrists. Indeed, we show that at least 40% of
Nader voters in the key state of Florida would have voted for Bush, as opposed to Gore, had they
turned out in a Nader-less election. The other 60% did indeed spoil the 2000 presidential election
for Gore but only because of highly idiosyncratic circumstances, namely, Florida’s extreme
closeness. Our results are based on studying over 46 million vote choices cast on approximately
three million ballots from across Florida in 2000. More generally, the results demonstrate how ballot
studies are capable of illuminating aspects of third party presidential voters that are otherwise
beyond scrutiny
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/lewis/pdf/greenreform9.pdf
The salient fact is Gore lost by 537 votes....
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