Nader would garner 3%-11% if 2004 presidential election held today?!

According to a poll released yesterday by the Scripps Howard News Service, voters today would vote differently than they did in 2004, giving Nader 7% (with a +/-4%). In the actual election, Nader won less than 1% of the vote.

The poll also revealed that from the 2000 presidential election, Nader and/or Buchanan would have garnered 9% of the vote. Presumably most of that 9% was for Nader.

It is interesting that after the major-party pre-election hype dies down and voters wake up, groggy, the next morning after an election, that in the last two presidential elections they would vote much more strongly for 3rd party alternatives as well as against the election winner.

Of course, national polls of 1,200 people have to be taken with a grain of salt, but it is still instructive and not meaningless.