Bigger question:
Who would the losing nominees have supported, more specifically: Dole, Perot, Anderson, Goldwater, Stevenson, Cox, Smith?
Perot: Apparently stayed quiet in 2016.
Anderson: Who did he support in 1984-2012?
Goldwater: Hillary and Biden
Stevenson: Hillary and Biden (favored an “intellectual” society)
Smith: Hillary and Biden (favored an internationalist foreign policy, was sympathetic to immigrants, and represented “liberal elites”)
Cox: No idea
Cox almost certainly would have backed Clinton and Biden, given that-in contrast to fellow 1920s Democratic losers Davis and Smith-he was a staunch supporter of Roosevelt (who had been his running mate in 1920) throughout his Presidency. I've also read that Perot, by the time of his death in 2019, was apparently supportive of Trump, although he never made his leanings known publicly. Anderson died in 2017, but I have no idea who he supported in 2016 or in any other election after 1984 (he endorsed Mondale that year). He was still involved in supporting third parties in the years before his death. Dole, of course, is the only living Republican nominee who endorsed Trump.
