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Polling update

More of my “Clinton supporters should really stop complaining about Gary Johnson taking Millennial voters” blogging.

The 538 “snake” (here, scroll down, you’ll know it when you see it) currently identifies New Hampshire as the tipping point– it’s the state that gets Clinton across the 270 finish line, and it’s also the last state she wins (that is, it’s where she has the smallest lead).

NH is one of Gary Johnson’s best states. And as I look at the most recent poll I can find that has both 2-way and 4-way match-ups there, from Marist, here’s how it looks.

2-way: Clinton leads 42-41.
4-way: Clinton leads 39-37, with 15 for Johnson and 3 for Stein.

(Interestingly, a lot of third-party voters in NH resisted the two-party prompt– 10% said “other” even when only given the Clinton-Trump options. You’ll notice there’s nothing like an 18 point total drop in the two-party vote between the two questions.)

If you only add a 3% Stein to a one-point Clinton lead, it seems very likely that you actually do get Florida 2000– the Green tips the election to the Republican.

But when you add both third-party candidates, Clinton’s lead increases— she loses two points, but Trump loses four. That means that it’s plausible, on current voting, that Stein tips NH and the whole election to Trump, while Johnson tips it back again. A lot of NH Republicans have always been libertarian-leaning– the “Live Free or Die” state is not very culturally or religiously conservative, and has always had a healthy share of Republicans who were anti-tax but moderate-to-liberal on abortion or gay rights. Libertarian VP nominee Bill Weld got on well with NH Republicans when he was governor of neighboring Massachusetts. And, finally, the state’s most influential newspaper, the deeply conservative and almost-always Republican Manchester Union-Leader, has endorsed Johnson. In short, there’s plenty of reason to think that Johnson’s support in NH eats into Trump’s ability to consolidate Republicans. At least as of right now, that looks like enough to decide the whole election.

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