There's been some claims that third party candidates cost Clinton the election. Let's take a look at these claims. The top six vote getters per Wikipedia were:
Clinton: 47.56%Trump: 47.27%Johnson: 3.22%Stein: 0.96%McMullin: 0.36%Castle: 0.14%If we pretend America had some version of IRV, I'll eliminate the bottom three candidates. For simplicity's sake, I will assume McMullin and Castle will go 100% Trump, and Stein will go 100% Clinton. The redistributed results are:
Clinton: 48.52%Trump: 47.77%Johnson: 3.22%Using some basic algebra, Clinton's break-even point in among Johnson supporters is about
62-
38 assuming all votes are redistributed. Similarly, the CNN article I linked to describes hypothetical where Clinton wins 50% of Johnson voters.
The problem is that historically strong Libertarian results have typically come from Republicans who dislike their controversial candidate. This describes Johnson and Trump to a T. Although there is no polling of Johnson supporters that I am aware of, the historical evidence suggests that he is more of a Republican Nader than a Ross Perot. If anything, his presence in the race helped Hillary Clinton by providing an outlet for Republicans not to vote for Trump.
