Here we go again blaming Nader for the FL 2000 debacle and therefore the national 2000 outcome. Apologies for a bit o' copy & paste from another similar thread:

>>>According to Susan MacManus, a political scientist at the University of South Florida, exit polls from the 2000 presidential election in Florida reveal that when Nader voters were asked who they would've voted for if Nader had >not< run and they were in a straight Bush vs. Gore contest, the responses were "split right down the middle." So the number of Nader votes going to Gore and to Bush would've been the same. (These are not the notorious VNS polls that resulted in inaccurate early projections.)

Nader received 96,837 votes in Florida in 2000. So, as an exercise in electoral accuracy, if we shoot one of the Nader voters, we can give 48,418 votes each to the two front-runners. Working from the final recount numbers in the Fla. Race, this would give Bush a total 2,597,594 votes. Gore would claim total votes of 2,955, 869.

So Nader and some Greens may hope to be spoilers, but the actual numbers don't support the constant (and continuing) repetition by Democrats and others that this is what happened in Florida in 2000.

But that's not all. Florida 2000 exit polls also tell us that 256,274 Democrats voted for Bush, and 167,598 Republicans voted for Gore. Letting the two lead candidates keep "their" Nader votes, if we assume for a moment that all Bush's Dem votes go to Gore & all Gore's GOP votes go to George II we can adjust the vote totals:

Gore = 3,212,143
Bush = 3,125,192

In other words, with enough Democrats pulling the lever for him, old Al mighta won the day. But, please, ignore all of this. It's much easier to blame the Nader and (depending on wind direction) the Green Party.

Pre-election voter roll purges, post-election hype and Supreme Court action IMO were the biggest factors involved in rigging the Florida election to produce the guy now in the White House.<<<<

Numbers are interesting. Here in Wisconsin in 2000, 2/3 of Nader voters didn't vote at all in 1996. Self-identified Democrats accounted for only 27% of his WI votes.

I agree with those pushing here for preferential or instant run-off voting. This is a more productive than casting Nader as Vader.

- Merritt