mary of voting results for the new, smaller parties is shown in Table 1. Table 2 summarizes the results entire election, including all five candidates.
Because the vote tallies for BAV are quite simple in concept, tables like these are quite easy to construct using spreadsheet software. If you would prefer to explore a different example, I would encourage you to construct similar tables for yourself. If that seems intimidating because you are not comfortable with spreadsheets, I still suggest you give it a try. Constructing a spreadsheet like this would serve as a very easy project for learning that very handy skill. But if you insist, the tables are not hard to prepare using only paper and pencil.
But, getting back to the example, this election upsets the predictions of the pundits. Despite being the largest of the five political parties, the Republican candidate lost the election. And it lost it in a very big way, suffering the embarrassment of a negative net vote (minus 365,012 votes). But at least the Republican did not finish in last place; that dishonor fell on the Libertarian candidate with a net vote of 1,043,500.
Only two candidates, the Democrat and the Progressive, finished with positive net votes. The Democrat won, but with only a very thin lead (merely 3621 votes) over the progressive candidate. With changes in only a few ballots, a win by a minor party could have made history. Perhaps in the next election, one of the minor-party candidates will succeed with a win, finally breaking with longstanding tradition of duopoly.
It is worth exploring how such a close loss by the Progressive candidate might affect subsequent elections. Many voters, regardless of party affiliation, are apt to reconsider their assumption that the new minor parties cannot win; this would probably have the most significant effect, even if many voters dismiss this election as an outlier. But in addition, there would likely be a burst of defections from the Democratic Party, to join the Progressive Party. The result would be an even more formidable Progressive Party.
And in learning estimates that 470,000 Progressive voters had voted support for the Democratic candidate, many Progressives probably would reconsider the wisdom of that decision. Although it seems unlikely that they would vote in opposition to the Democrat, in future elections, it would be surprising if Progressives' support for the Democratic candidate would continue to be as strong; many would probably abstain instead. And as well, perhaps more Socialist Party members would decide to vote support for the Progressive candidate rather than abstain. Elections do have consequences, and some of those consequences will be felt only in future elections.
A father of quantum theory, Max Planck, is credited with the observation that scientific progress happens one funeral at a time. Old beliefs are hard to abandon and that surely applies in politics even more than in science. But beliefs do change and that is why an important battle is to overcome the very persistent beliefs of voters.
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