I think it deserves it's own thread: Gore won the election

[Jim Lane]

61. I assume you meant to write that Nader took more than 90,000 votes, which strengthens your point.

Naderites try to get around this by saying that a lot of those people were so disgusted with Gore that they wouldn't have voted for him even without Nader on the ballot. While that's true, it doesn't change the fact that Nader's decision to exercise his legal right to run was one of the causes of the Bush presidency.

According to exit polling that (IIRC) Nader himself has cited, there were such disgusted Nader voters who, without Nader on the ballot on the Green Party line, would have written him in, or voted for whoever was on the Green Party line, or voted for some other no-hoper minor candidate, or would have left the presidential vote blank, or would have stayed home entirely. All these people, instead of making themselves virtually irrelevant by voting for Nader, would have been finding some other way to make themselves virtually irrelevant. They may be ignored for this purpose.

The only Nader voters who matter are those who, without Nader on the ballot, would have voted for Bush or Gore. (Yes, some said they would have voted for Bush.) They key point is that the percentage of Nader voters voting for Gore minus the percentage voting for Bush was about 13. Thus, if Nader had decided not to run, the Gore margin -- number of Gore votes minus number of Bush votes, which in the official count was minus 500 or so -- would have increased by 13 percent of Nader's total vote. Even with a typo to render Nader's total at 9,000, that would have been enough to give Gore the Presidency, but of course at Nader's actual total of well over 90,000 the gain for Gore of more than 10,000 would have put the state (and thus the Presidency) out of reach of any Republican cheating and Supreme Court malfeasance.

An event can have more than one cause. Bush became President partly because of the illegal voter purge in Florida, partly because of Nader's candidacy, partly because of the Supreme Court decision, etc. Change any one of those factors and Gore would have become President. That there were multiple factors doesn't excuse Nader any more than it excuses Katherine Harris.