Conceding that Montana's Democrat Sen. Jon Tester was in a fight for his political life, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Gary Peters, D-Mich., nevertheless disagreed with the theory the Libertarian will draw enough votes from Republican Tim Sheehy to ensure the embattled incumbent's re-election.
"It's sometimes difficult to know that, because some folks who are voting Libertarian are voting libertarian — that's what they believe," Peters told Newsmax at a Washington, D.C., breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.
Peters added that libertarian-minded voters "may, if there is not a Libertarian [nominee] on the ballot, just skip that line as well and not support either [major party] candidate."
In recent weeks, National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Steve Daines, R-Mont., have tried to persuade Libertarian nominee Sid Daoud to abandon the Senate race in Montana and thus permit Sheehy to go one on one with Tester, who has won all three of his terms by 4% of the vote or less.
Most Republicans have long charged that votes cast for a Libertarian would have gone to their candidate.
Virginia Republicans, for example, insist that the 6.8% cast for Libertarian Robert Sarvis made the difference between Democrat winner Terry McAuliffe's 48% to 45.5% win over Republican Ken Cuccinelli in 2013 and that Sarvis' 1.87% in the Senate race the following year made the difference in Democrat Mark Warner's razor-thin 49.15% to 48.34% win against Republican Ed Gillespie.
"Probably, you know, usually a Libertarian will have some impact on the Republican candidate, and less on the Democratic candidate," Peters conceded, "But in some cases, too, those votes don't go anywhere. It's just it's hard to know, especially if it's a small fraction, and normally, what happens with all the third-party candidates? Whatever the polling shows right now, it tends to be less when the election actually occurs."
A just-completed poll commissioned by AARP showed Sheehy leading Tester 49% to 41% and Libertarian Daoud at 4%.
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