US election 2024: Could Jill Stein decide whether Trump or Harris wins? | 2024 US Election News

In an ad for the US Democrats in October, an image of left-wing environmentalist Jill Stein morphs into the face of Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump in an instant.

“A vote for Stein is really a vote for Trump,” says a warning voiceover in the ad, titled “Crucial.” The video goes into Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania this year saying, “Jill Stein? I like her a lot. You know why? She takes 100 percent from them.”

On October 28, the Democratic National Committee announced it would spend about $500,000 in a last-minute effort to persuade voters in swing states to vote for third-party candidates like Stein, the Green Party presidential nominee and the unaffiliated. candidate, Cornel West.

Both Trump and Democrats have suggested that Stein could derail the vote for Democratic nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris, paving the way for a Trump victory.

But what do the polls say? How much influence can Stein, a third-party candidate, have on the outcome?

Who is Jill Stein and what are her key positions?

Stein, 74, is the US Green Party’s presidential nominee. She announced her candidacy via a video message on X on 9 November 2023. She previously stood for election in 2012 and 2016.

Born in Chicago and raised in Illinois, Stein graduated from Harvard College in 1973 and from Harvard Medical School in 1979. Her campaign website describes her as a general practitioner.

The Green Party is a left-wing coalition of green state parties in the United States that advocates environmentalism and social justice.

Her position on some of the key issues in this election is:

Israel’s war on Gaza

Stein has called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, an end to the blockade of the Palestinian enclave, the delivery of humanitarian aid and the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons along with Israeli prisoners held in Gaza. According to her campaign website, she wants to “stop US support and arms sales to human rights abusers”. She wants to “stop the long-standing US practice of vetoing UN Security Council resolutions to hold Israel accountable to international law”. She also says she wants to dissolve NATO and “replace it with a modern, inclusive security framework that respects the security interests of all nations and peoples”.

Russia-Ukraine war

The Greens want to “stop fueling” the war between Russia and Ukraine and work to negotiate a peaceful end to it.

Climate change

Stein’s party wants to advance the Green New Deal proposal to transition to clean energy and achieve zero emissions. The party says it takes an “eco-socialist approach” to the environment, centering and compensating black people, indigenous peoples and the poor. Stein wants to declare a climate emergency and secure the release of $650 billion annually to boost renewable energy and clean transportation.

The economy

A Stein administration would seek to create an economy that “works for working people, not just the rich and powerful.” Stein wants to enact an economic bill of rights, abolish private schools, and guarantee free childcare and a lifetime of free public education for everyone from preschool to high school. Additionally, she wants to cancel student debt for 43 million people in the United States. She also wants to cut taxes on incomes below the real median income of $75,000 per person. household and increase taxes on “the ultra-wealthy and giant corporations”.

How is Stein doing in the polls?

Overall, Stein polled by about 1 percent nationally, according to The New York Times poll released in the first week of October.

However, discontent is brewing among many Arab-American and Muslim voters with both the leading candidates – Harris and Trump – because of their unwavering support for Israel in its war in Gaza.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a US-based Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, revealed on Friday that 42.3 percent of Muslim voters favor Stein, compared to 41 percent of Muslim voters who prefer Harris.

The survey of 1,449 verified Muslim American voters was conducted between October 1 and 31. It showed that only 9.8 percent of Muslim voters supported Trump.

As of February 27 of this year, CAIR estimated that there were about 2.5 million registered Muslim American voters. That’s about 1.6 percent of about 160 million registered voters in the United States.

How is Stein polling in the swing states?

Between October 30 and 31, Brazil-based analytics and data intelligence website AtlasIntel surveyed samples of voters in the seven swing states.

• Arizona: 1.1 percent of voters preferred Stein; 50.8 percent preferred Trump; and 45.9 Harris
• Georgia: 2 percent for Stein; 48.8 percent for Trump; and 47.2 percent for Harris
• Michigan: 1.7 percent for Stein; 49.2 percent for Trump; and 48.3 percent for Harris
• Nevada: 1.2 percent of voters chose “Other”; 50.5 percent chose Trump; and 46.9 percent chose Harris; Stein did not appear on the ballot
• North Carolina: 0.7 percent for Stein; 50.7 percent for Trump; and 46.7 percent for Harris
• Pennsylvania: 1 percent for Stein; 48.5 percent for Trump; and 47.4 percent for Harris
• Wisconsin: 0.8 percent for Stein; 48.5 percent for Trump; and 48.2 percent for Harris

Could Stein swing this pick?

With the margins between Harris and Trump so narrow, some experts believe that votes for Stein could actually swing the election.

“The vote right now is so close that a small amount of tipping one way or the other could swing it,” Bernard Tamas, a professor of political science at Valdosta State University, told The Guardian newspaper.

The Guardian also quoted Nura Sediqe, an assistant professor of American politics at Michigan State University, who said: “Muslims are divided. Not all of them vote third party, but let’s imagine a third party is: then you have got up to 50,000 votes that traditionally would have gone to the Democrats moving away. So if the margin is as small as it was last time, it could affect the Democratic Party.”

On Friday, the European Green family, including green parties across Europe, released a joint statement calling on Stein to withdraw from the race and support Harris. “We are clear that Kamala Harris is the only candidate who can block Donald Trump and his anti-democratic, authoritarian policies from the White House,” the statement read.

However, Kyle Kopko, an adjunct professor of political science at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, told Al Jazeera that while in theory Stein could swing the election, in practice it depends on how close the election results are.

It would have to be an “extraordinarily close election” for her to swing the vote, Kopko said.

Have the votes for Stein swung the election before?

Stein ran in the 2016 election and won 132,000 votes across the battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Together, the three states are worth 44 electoral votes.

In these three states, Democrat Hilary Clinton lost by a combined 77,000 votes. Despite winning the popular vote, Clinton therefore lost the Electoral College vote to Trump, who won 304 votes compared to Clinton’s 227.

The Republican frontrunner beat Clinton in Michigan by a 0.3 percentage point margin, in Pennsylvania by a 0.7 point margin and in Wisconsin by a 0.7 point margin. These narrow victories gave him a combined 44 electoral votes from the three states.

In November 2016, an analysis cited by Vox suggested that if every Stein voter had voted for Clinton instead, she could have won Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and therefore the election.

Kopko said this can be misleading. If Stein had not been on the ballot, it is unlikely that all Stein voters would have voted for Clinton. “Some voters would become disillusioned and not vote at all, or find another third-party candidate to vote for,” he said.

Did other third-party candidates influence the election results?

In the 2000 US presidential election, Green Party candidates Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke ran on the party’s ticket and ended up winning 2.7 percent of the popular vote. Nader made inroads in the swing states of Florida and New Hampshire, and it is believed that this allowed the states to flip from the Democrats to the Republicans.

This gave rise to speculation that the Green Party ticket was eating into the vote share of Democrat Al Gore to shore up a Republican George Bush victory. The Green Party rejected that.

Gore won more than half a million votes and conceded only after a months-long legal battle.

The two-party political system has made it difficult for third parties to tamper with the election results.

Only four third-party candidates have been able to win the electoral college vote since 1920. They are – Robert La Follette, who won 13 electoral votes in 1924; Strom Thurmond, who won 39 in 1948; George Wallace, who won 45 in 1968; and John Hospers, who won one electoral vote cast by a faithless elector in 1972.