The Oddness of Three-way Races

I promise, after the election on Nov. 2 we'll be back to talking about policies, dirty deals, and everything wrong in the news cycle, but for now it seems worthwhile to discuss more regarding the upcoming midterms. But for now let's talk about a few (normally rare in American elections) three-way races that have proved interesting.

In my most recent post last week, I made a note at the bottom that it is difficult to predict the outcome of the Florida Senate race between Independent Governor Charlie Crist, Republican Marco Rubio, and Democrat Kendrick Meek. The news out of the New York Times on Thursday was that Matt McKenna, spokesperson for President Bill Clinton, who had be in Florida campaigning for longtime friend Meek, claimed that Clinton had urged Meek to drop out of the race and endorse Crist. Clinton has a political alliance and friendship with Meek since Meek, a police officer, was assigned to Clinton's detail during Clinton's travels in Florida when he was President. According to the NYT, the two politicians had even agreed upon a time for Meek to drop out and officially endorse the Governor. However, Meek had decided at the last minute not to drop out.

It makes sense that Clinton would urge Meek to drop out; at this point 50% of Florida's Democrats are planning on voting for Crist as opposed to only 10% of Florida's Republicans. If Crist were to win, it seems reasonably likely that he would caucus with the Democrats who got him elected, and there is almost no way for Crist to win unless he were to receive near unanimous Democratic support. Meek dropping out, which has been implicitly or explicitly urged by some Democrats, including Clinton and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., would facilitate this opportunity for Crist.

Interestingly, Meek's campaign has strongly contested this whole story, saying the Mr. Meek had never planned on dropping out and intends to become the next US Senator from Florida. Still, the whole debacle may end up working in Crist's favor, if Democrats can be convinced that a vote for Meek is a vote for Rubio. It is this strategic vote aspect that I have consistently mentioned makes three way races extremely volatile.

Or I should say CAN make them volatile. It may be too soon to say whether there will be a major shift to Crist, but despite all this hullabaloo and pushing back and forth between all three candidates, the Florida race has maintained a relatively static stature in polls with little change for weeks. 6 weeks ago it would have been reasonable to expect Rubio to receive about 40% of the vote, Crist to receive about 35% and Meek to receive about 20%. This same trend has held until now.

This is also true of the Alaska Senate race, in which Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski is mounting a write-in bid for her seat, after narrowly losing the Republican Primary in that state to Joe Miller. Similar to the Florida race, for the last 6 weeks Joe Miller and Lisa Murkowski have polled about even at 35% while the Democrat, McAdams, has about 25% of the vote. There are dynamics in this race which complicate it, like the write-in process, and the fact that mounting a successful write-in candidacy is very unlikely in recent times. Still, something in the Florida and Alaska races is preventing normal strategic volatility that you'd expect in a three way race. Perhaps its the fact that no candidate has been perceived to be gaining ground in these races.

But I suspect the stalled polls are due to the unique situation of these contests. As is turns out, both Crist and Murkowski are well known Republicans who have tacked some to the center in order to fuel their "independent" bids for their respective seats. Both were also knocked off in their primaries by opponents who are seen as "too" conservative by the mainstream electorate. For these reasons it seems unlikely that Democrats would defect to a well known former Republican tacking to the center, unlikely that Tea Partiers and Republican Party regulars would defect to a perceived sore loser and moderate, and unlikely that moderates would defect to the Democrat (because he's likely to lose) or the Tea Party-backed "super" conservative because he's too extreme. The result is a static electorate in polls.


The situation is different in three other notable races this year, all for the Governorship.

I've already discussed the interesting dynamics of the Colorado race in my profile of American Constitution Party candidate Tom Tancredo. In this three party race, strategic voting is evident. Key in the use of strategic voting is the perception that any of the candidates is becoming a "wasted vote". So let's see... First, Tancredo is actually running a campaign a little to the right of Republican Dan Maes. Second, Dan Maes has proved to be a relatively weak candidate and has shown a real ineptitude for campaigning. So as soon as Republicans began to realize that Maes and Tancredo were splitting the vote, many people defected in the polls to Tancredo, which fueled even more support for the independent candidate. Over the last several weeks, Maes has seen his support drop to dismal levels, consistently below 10% and Tancredo is finding himself within striking distance of the Democrat, Hickenlooper. This all occurred because people began to watch polls, which showed Maes in a weak position and after hitting a tipping point, all voters interested in preventing Hickenlooper from attaining the Governorship knew that Tancredo was their man. Interestingly, I'll point out again that this effect would probably not have occurred (or at least not to that degree) except for the modern era of polling.

Another example of this "strategic voting" effect is in Rhode Island, where Democrat Frank Caprio is running against former Senator Linc Chafee who is an independent. In a campaign stop to Rhode Island, Barack Obama (now famously) withheld an endorsement for Caprio, citing a buddy-buddy relationship with Chafee from the President's work in the Senate. As support for Robitaille the Republican has increased (now above 25%), many progressives seem to be concerned that their candidate, Caprio (especially absent an endorsement from the President), might not have enough support to take down both Chafee and Robitaille. Since Chafee is left leaning anyway, he has become the favored candidate between Chafee and Caprio and is now polling around 35%, essentially switching places with Caprio. My guess is this is the beginning of the tipping point, and that Chafee will end up with a respectable lead, now that Caprio is increasingly seen as a candidate who cannot win. This kind of volatility can happen quickly, even within a week, and can seriously change elections, as seems to be the case in RI.

The final race of interest is the Maine Governor's contest, where Paul LePage, the Republican, has been in a neck-and-neck fight with Democrat Libby Mitchell for weeks, and it began to look like Mitchell's campaign had plateaued. Recently however, third-party candidate Eliot Cutler has been gaining ground, drawing even with Mitchell, and desperate to prevent the tea-party-backed LePage from winning, Democrats seem to be abandoning Mitchell's campaign to vote for Cutler. The more polls show that Cutler is drawing closer to LePage, the more there will be defections from the Mitchell campaign because she will be seen as a non-viable candidate. It will be interesting to see how much ground Cutler can make up at the last minute. At this point in the election, it may be too little too late, but a last minute swing is not out of the question.


These kind of last-minute fluctuations are exactly what makes three-way races hard to predict. Any sign of weakness on the part of any candidate can have disastrous results. Right now it can be reasonably expected that Hickenlooper(D) will win in Colorado because Tancedo and Maes are splitting the vote. In Rhode Island, Chafee(I) seems the favorite for victory. And in Maine, LePage(R) seems well on his way to success. Were each of these races between just two candidates, all three would likely be turning out very differently. In Colorado, it's likely that a Republican candidate would be winning (in this environment). Rhode Island would likely elect a Democrat, not an Independent. And Maine would almost certainly reject Tea Party values and elect a Democrat as well.

Some have suggested that the solution to the problem of three way contests, strategic voting, and a candidate winning with less than 50% of the vote, is a different voting system than our current "first past the post" or "plurality" method. Ideally, we should have a method that protects people from feeling as though they need to strategically vote, and can just express support for the candidate they think is best for the job.

One option to address this problem is the Instant Runoff Voting method, which is being piloted in a number of cities and states including North Carolina this Midterm election. In light of the challenges posed by these three-way races, I'll have a post examining IRV and other election options soon.