What would have happened if Nader won New York in 2004?

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New York uses fusion, where you can be nominated by different parties, and the votes are added up to determine who won.

Nader's running mate on the Peace & Justice party line was Camejo
Nader's running mate on the Independence party line was Pierce

Suppose that the combined Nader vote wins, but that there are more votes for Kerry/Edwards than either Nader/Camejo or Nader/Pierce. What happens? Remember, you're actually voting to elect electors, and not the President directly.

[AndrewTX]

Nader would win. The Peace & Justice party and the Independence party would probably work out a deal, and put maybe select 15 electors from one party, and 16 from another.

[Erc]

I'm really not sure...the best place to look for precedent would be New York Gubernatorial races where different parties ran different Lt. Governor candidates.  I don't know whether that's ever happened, though.

Another place to look for precedent historically would be a race like 1896, where Bryan was endorsed by the Democrats (with Arthur Sewall as VP) and the Populists (with Tom Watson as VP), and see if any states that Bryan won narrowly have something strange with the VP results.

The only razor-sharp Bryan victory that year was South Dakota, which Bryan won by 183 votes.  Interestingly, Bryan is listed solely on the Populist line (remindful of 1912, where Taft wasn't even on the ballot).  Of the 4 electoral votes in the state, all 4 were cast for Bryan as President, but 2 were cast for Sewall and two were cast for Watson.

In other (non-close) states, there was a similar splitting between Watson & Sewall (mostly in favor of Sewall).  One wonders whether this came about from a prior arrangement between the Democrat & Populist parties, whether this was electors' personal conscience, or whether it was the result of some splitting (not seen in Dave's data) between the Populist & Democrat lines.

Electors voting for Watson:
AR: 3 (out of 8 )
LA: 4 (out of 8 )
MO: 4 (out of 17)
MT: 1 (out of 3)
NE: 4 (out of 8 )
NC: 5 (out of 11)
SD: 2 (out of 4)
UT: 1 (out of 3)
WA: 2 (out of 4)
WY: 1 (out of 3)
All other Bryan states had all of their electors voting for Sewall.
Total: 27 electors, out of 176 total voting for Bryan.

From other sources:
The Populist Ticket supposedly won "217,000 votes in 17 states"--b/w 1 & 2% of the total vote nationwide.
The Populist Ticket elected 31 electors, of whom four were faithless & voted for Sewall.

[Erc]

Brief postscript...

In the 1994 NY governor's race, the column that received the most votes was:

Cuomo/Lundine (Democrat): 2,272,903.

Pataki/McCaughey (Republican) only received 2,156,057...but the additional 328,605 Conservative vote and the 54,040 Tax Cut Now vote overcame that differential and the 92,001 Cuomo vote on the Liberal ticket.

Since McCaughey was the Lt. Governor candidate on all three Pataki lines, this doesn't help answer our question, unfortunately.

[Erc]

In the end, my guess is...what really matters is the electors...if the electors for both parties are the same, that set of electors wins.  If they're different, then the Kerry/Edwards slate wins.

Most likely, the two parties (if they actually had a chance of winning) would have picked the same slate of electors, with some number for Camejo and some number for Pierce (or deciding ahead of time that the electors would vote for the VP for the party that got the most votes, or something)--which is probably what happened in 1892, and is similar, to some extent, to the AL 1960 results (5 unpledged / 6 Kennedy electors)

On a similar note, it has been suggested that Nader should have made his electors the same as the Kerry/Edwards electors, allowing people to vote for Nader but have their votes actually count for Kerry if it came down to it.  Not a bad strategy, if you're only trying to appeal to one party's members.
Dave blogged about this back in 2004, in response to an NYT article.
Whether it would work outside fusion states, who knows.

[gorkay]

Brief postscript...

In the 1994 NY governor's race, the column that received the most votes was:

Cuomo/Lundine (Democrat): 2,272,903.

Pataki/McCaughey (Republican) only received 2,156,057...but the additional 328,605 Conservative vote and the 54,040 Tax Cut Now vote overcame that differential and the 92,001 Cuomo vote on the Liberal ticket.

Since McCaughey was the Lt. Governor candidate on all three Pataki lines, this doesn't help answer our question, unfortunately.

This has happened a lot in New York elections, because of their unique third-party situation. I remember observing once that FDR, in at least a couple of his elections, received fewer votes as a Democrat than his Republican opponent, but his vote on the American Labor and/or Liberal tickets was enough for him to carry the state easily.