I wrote recently about Bob Barr’s Libertarian Party candidacy last week. One of the bases for a right-leaning Libertarian candidacy was that Barr would siphon voters from Republicans disaffected with McCain. In late June, that seemed like a good bet for Barr.
It took six ballots, but Barr won the LP nomination, with hopes of plentiful funding and a vote share far beyond the LP’s typical levels. Barr, not Nader, was supposed to be the third-party candidate to watch.
Well, McCain’s not doing so well, but it doesn’t seem to have helped Barr. Barr’s raised less money than some House candidates! He still measures no more than 1-2% in most polls, with Nader doing as well or better.
It’s possible that McCain’s not really finished, despite recent polls, as voters are unwilling to abandon him for a third-party candidate.
If that’s true, McCain may be closer to Obama’s strength than polls suggest. It may be that many libertarian-oriented voters (beyond the LP) so dislike Obama’s pro-government stance that they’ll still support McCain in the hope he might yet defeat Obama.
(This might mean, also, that many undecideds are really McCain voters.)
(In the first scenario, these voters still like McCain enough; in the second scenario, they still dislike Obama enough