I mean the real comparison is just: did she get enough votes, in states that Clinton lost, where if those people had all voted for Clinton, then Clinton would have won that state. I don’t know the answer, but even if the numbers did cover the margin, I think saying Stein is therefore a spoiler is problematic for a few reasons:
- It ignores the very real number of voters who chose not to vote democratic or vote at all simply because of Clinton as candidate.
- it ignores massive mistakes made by a hubristic campaign that couldn’t fathom losing to trump.
- it supposes that people that voted green, would have gritted their teeth and instead voted Clinton, which is not a safe assumption.
Regarding OP’s argument: if Stein is a spoiler, than the libertarians are also spoilers. Since her being a spoiler assumes a majority of her votes would have gone democratic, we can take the same liberty and assume the libertarians would have instead opted for trump. If they had larger vote numbers than the Green Party got, as OP is saying above, then they cancel out greens spoiler-ness, and in fact represent a slight spoiler in favor of the democrats. I don’t really buy this read for the reasons I mentioned above, but OP’s point still kinda stands.
I’m not personally interested in voting for stein, I’ve heard enough weird stuff about her over the years that I’m not comfortable with her as a candidate. But I don’t buy the constant messaging that “third party votes are wasted votes”. My assumption with people that post these things is that they’re not suggesting it’s OK to not vote. And assumably, they also don’t want you to vote, but vote for the opposition. So it’s just the same old thing: vote the way I want you to.
Well said-I feel the same.