Take the Green Out of Blue and You Get Red

There was much ado about the hanging chad in the 2000 Election, but another costly reason Al Gore lost Florida had to do with Ralph Nader running on the Green Party Platform.

Nader was the Green Party nominee again in 2000. He actively campaigned and raised money, and was supported by several high-profile celebrities. He significantly increased his national vote total, receiving 2,882,955 votes, or 2.74 percent. But it was the 97,488 votes Nader received in Florida that brought him the wrath of Democrats once Gore lost the state and the election.

Those one hundred thousand votes came almost solely from Democratic voters, greatly damaging Gore's chances in Florida, which he lost be an astonishingly close 537 votes. Nader's platform called for far greater emphasis placed upon environmental issues, especially as related to greenhouse gas emissions. While Nader claims he was running under the hope of actually winning the election, it is clear that he was mostly intending to get the issues of the Green Party on to the national forum, and in turn, allow the Gore the option of regaining Nader's voters in return for adopting a more 'Green' party line. However, Gore ignored this option, which is clearly defined in Downs' work An Economic Theory of Democracy.Downs spells out this theory on page 131:

When one of the parties in a two-party system has drifted away from the extreme nearest it toward the moderate center, its extremist supporters may form a new party to pull the policies of the old one back toward them [...] This party cannot possibly win itself, but it can throw the election to the opponent by diverting extremists votes from the moderate party. To get rid of this menace, the moderate party must adopt some of the extremists' policies, thus moving back from the center.

Gore chose to more or less ignore the Green Party, resulting in scenario one (throwing the election to the opponent). Had he co-opted the Green Party from the start, he would have had the advantage of accruing those votes and likely winning the Presidency.

Of course Nader cannot be the only source of blame for Gore's defeat. His inability to win his own home state amongst other blunders all contributed to George W Bush winning he election. But maybe if Gore had a keener understanding on simple majority in the two party system, he would have used Nader to his advantage and kept the Presidency under the Democrats for (at least) 4 more years.