We have enough data in the bank that we can now say it: Independent candidate Evan McMullin has a very real chance of winning a state — Utah — on Election Day. Multiple polls now show him neck-and-neck with GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.

And if he does, he'll be doing something that hasn't been done in 92 years and has happened only once since the Civil War: winning a single state as a protest vote.

In another way, though, what McMullin is attempting is kind of unprecedented, because no candidate has focused so intently on just one state and actually won it.

Going back through history, it's exceedingly rare for third-party candidates to win states, and when it's happened, it's generally been because of racial strife. American Independent Party candidate George Wallace won five Southern states in 1968. States' Rights Party candidate Strom Thurmond won four more in 1948. And two Southern states went for “unpledged” in 1960 rather than John F. Kennedy or Richard Nixon. All happened in the civil rights era and because of unrest.

Apart from those instances, no third-party candidate has won a state since 1924 — ever since Sen. Robert La Follette won his home state of Wisconsin.

Like La Follette, McMullin is hoping to win his home state. He's also hoping to do so as what can't be described as anything other than a protest vote. McMullin has focused intently on wooing fellow Utah Mormons, whose distaste for Donald Trump runs deep but who also dislike Hillary Clinton enough that McMullin has an unusual path to victory. He has done this to the exclusion of basically every other state, and he launched his campaign too late to even make the ballot in many states.

And yet, here we are today, with polls showing him basically tied with Trump in Utah.

snip

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-...-unprecedented/


Plenty of irony here! TM

Quote: truthkeeper wrote in post #2

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I think according to the latest Trump is up by 10 there. Sounds like enough of the Mormons figured it out.

As my Italian gramma would say, "Tanks Gods fer dat."

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