There will be three presidential candidates for whom all American voters can vote in the upcoming 2016 presidential election: Democrat Hillary Clinton, Libertarian Gary Johnson and Republican Donald Trump. While Johnson is gaining momentum after being nominated the Libertarian Party presidential nominee, Clinton and Trump still will need to be the official nominees for their respective parties. The two are the presumptive nominees for the Republicans and Democrats.
Since Johnson has begun being included in some of the national and key state polls, he has proven he is a serious and credible candidate. He has been doing very well in the mid-west as well as the south-west states; however, it appears Clinton and Trump are taking away votes from him mostly in the northeast. For example, in New Hampshire Clinton and Trump combined are taking 86 percent of the vote totals only leaving Johnson with 14 percent. Similar results can be found in Pennsylvania and New York, but in many cases we simply do not know because polling agencies often exclude Johnson from the polling in several key states.
This is mostly due to many polling agencies not testing Johnson in the polls in the northeast and also due to a near media blackout of his candidacy. Fortunately, some Boston-based media outlets have mentioned him, but mostly because of his VP running mate Bill Weld, who is a two-term Governor of Massachusetts.
Johnson is being unfairly treated by the establishment media as they continue to exclude his name when reporting about the 2016 presidential election and liberally use Clinton and Trump’s name repeatedly. As well, polling agencies refuse to treat Johnson equally alongside Clinton and Trump. For instance, there is no purpose in asking a respondent to a poll if they plan to vote for Clinton or Trump while excluding Johnson because Johnson will, in fact, be on the ballot in all 50 states for those respondents to choose in November. So why distance Johnson from the question? It is clearly an attempt to marginalize the qualified candidate and put in the respondents’ minds that Clinton and Trump are the only “real” candidates. Likewise, for news broadcasts when they use the term “the two candidates running for president.” We often see terms by various media outlets that Johnson is “stealing” votes from either Clinton or Trump. Or they use the term “spoiler” to further discredit him (which is why I intentionally used the word in this headline). There is no stealing going on. Johnson is earning votes from around the nation as more people get to know who he is. By the way, 61% of Americans still do not know who he is or well enough to muster an opinion about him because the establishment media is failing at its journalistic job to inform the public.
A recent post by Robert Bentley showed how Johnson could potentially garner 99 electoral votes in November. Johnson as polled as high as 12% nationally and 16% in Utah, showing he is a key player in the 2016 presidential electon. Yet, the establishment still treats him as a fringe candidate when his ideas are now mainstream and he has proven himself to be a credible candidate as a two-term Governor of New Mexico.
Americans can only hope that the establishment media and the polling agencies do the right thing as the presidential election season continues through the summer and autumn. We can only hope they return to principled journalism, rather than being lackeys for the duopoly of the Republican and Democratic parties.
The Palm Beach Examiner 