With Trump and Biden on the Ballot, Many Voters Prefer ‘None of the Above’
On Super Tuesday, as this issue went to press, voters in 15 states and one territory went to the polls and grudgingly validated the inevitable. America is in for another presidential election pitting Donald Trump against Joe Biden.
The following morning, Nikki Haley—Trump’s one serious remaining Republican primary competitor—dropped out. But the real Super Tuesday runner-up is still in the race: “None of the above” made a surprisingly strong showing.
Nevada in the 1970s was the birthplace of many excellent ideas, and electoral reforms were no exception. The state’s “none of these candidates” option was introduced in 1976, and it remains the bluntest ballot language in the category.
Due to a variety of byzantine complications—including the absence of Trump from the ballot and the existence of caucuses in addition to the primary—”none of these candidates” performed better than all the candidates listed in the February Nevada Republican primary this year. In fact, “none of these candidates” beat second-place Haley by 33 percentage points.
This year’s GOP signals were mixed in Nevada—most of those votes were likely from Trump fans—but in the Democratic primary, which was a simpler case, “none of these candidates” still pulled a solid 5.6 percent. More importantly, the state’s long history of the “none of these candidates” option has provided fodder for study. In a 2012 paper published in Political Research Quarterly, researchers from the University of Utah found that voters who checked that box on their ballots were sending “a less ambiguous signal of discontent than other nonvotes.” In other words, the existence of the “none of these candidates” option allows researchers—and presumably office seekers—to better distinguish between the various reasons someone might opt not to vote for mainstream candidates.
Showing up to vote but refusing to vote for anyone who appears on the ballot takes effort, and can therefore be a powerful way for voters to convey their displeasure to decision makers.
It’s no surprise that in a presidential contest that is shaping up to feature two well-known and historically unpopular candidates, interest in sending that “signal of discontent” was notable and noted on Super Tuesday.
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