2016 Gary Johnson cuts into Clinton’s lead Democrats thought he would take from Trump but polls show he’s attracting voters who like neither candidate.

NEW YORK — Gary Johnson was never supposed to be a problem for Hillary Clinton.

The low-profile Libertarian’s presence on the ballot would serve as an easy out for #NeverTrump Republicans, Democrats aligned with the nominee have long figured, and that could only hurt Donald Trump.


But as national and battleground polls tighten and Democrats’ hand-wringing grows more urgent, operatives both within and allied with Clinton’s political operation who are looking around to explain Trump’s new polling strength are growing increasingly wary of the former New Mexico governor. His appeal with young and libertarian-leaning liberals, they worry, could create a growing headache for them in western states like Nevada, Colorado, and Arizona — if not yet reason to believe he could hand the states to Trump.

For now, Clinton’s national team and Democrats close to them chalk up Johnson-focused concerns to classic liberal panic, especially as they think his window is closing. While a new national Quinnipiac poll this week showed 60 percent of Clinton voters and 50 percent of Trump voters want to see Johnson on the debate stages — and while his campaign placed a full-page New York Times ad to that effect on Wednesday — his chances of reaching the polling threshold are vanishing rapidly. Top Clinton officials long expected Trump to agitate to get Johnson on the stage, but the Republican nominee has said he doesn’t want that to happen.

A handful of recent polls show Johnson drawing evenly from Trump’s and Clinton’s support — not just whittling down Trump’s.

“Westerners in general, Nevadans in particular, are independent thinkers, and we have a wide variety in our state, between urban Nevada and rural Nevada,” said Bob Miller, the state’s last Democratic governor, making the case that Clinton “definitely” needs to be concerned about Johnson’s presence there. “There’s just every kind of opinion you can think of. [The] northeastern part of the state and other parts of rural Nevada have a libertarian element."

It’s a brewing in-state concern rather than a national freak-out so far, especially since Johnson’s inclusion in polling has made it nearly impossible for Trump to break 45 percent nationally. Top Clinton operatives in those states have been monitoring Johnson’s appeal for months, yet there’s no Johnson strike-force in Brooklyn, and his name rarely surfaces in the strategy calls.

But the Quinnipiac poll spells out the reason some in-state Clinton aides have been tracking his movement much more closely than they ever expected to: he may act as a ceiling on Trump.

Certainly, though, he’s taking support from Clinton, too.

She leads by five points among likely voters in a two-way national race, 48 percent to 43 percent. But when Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein are included, Clinton’s lead shrinks to two: she’s at 41 points, with Trump at 39, Johnson at 13, and Stein at 4. Democrats assume that all of Stein’s support comes from the Clinton column, meaning Johnson’s is split roughly evenly between Clinton and Trump.

That’s a break from the earlier Washington wisdom that Johnson’s inclusion on ballots was a clear benefit to Clinton as a go-to for conservatives uncomfortable with Trump. Instead, he has turned into a “None of These Candidates” option much like the one by that name that will also be printed on Nevada’s ballot.

Johnson’s campaign manager Ron Nielson confirmed that his team is seeing Johnson pull roughly evenly from Trump and Clinton, but he said his candidate has targeted the western states as he races to gain name recognition in an attempt to take votes primarily from Trump — a result that would cheer Clinton.

“We hope as we move forward in some of these western states like New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada that as Johnson moves toward second place, some of the Trump folks will see that Trump will not win that state and join us against Hillary Clinton,” said Nielson. “These states could determine the outcome of the presidential election, and that’s why we targeted them."

Clinton has maintained a steady lead in both New Mexico and Colorado throughout the year, but her strategists in Colorado — once considered a core swing state — have been warning that Johnson could pull from her support there for months. While that hasn’t happened, recent polling shows that Nevada is still a neck-and-neck race: Clinton leads by less than a point there according to the RealClearPolitics average.

“My understanding is that Trump has remained fairly steady and the transition recently has been the Clinton campaign slipping in some of the polls, and where that happens it seems like [Johnson] or ‘none of the above’ is on the rise,” said Miller of his home state, where the race has appeared to tighten slightly in recent weeks. “They’ve got to really work hard to make sure that the vote gets out. A lot of it is independents, so she’s got to project to those voters as well."

Accordingly, Clinton’s current battleground organizing surge designed to drive base turnout is her team’s primary answer to any concerns that Johnson’s causing her too much trouble.

Plus, said Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, a prominent Clinton supporter, as the race tightens and Trump’s numbers look better and better, voters who have been supporting Johnson as a protest are likely to get nervous.

“People who want to park their vote with the Libertarian are coming to grips with the fact that [their vote] in some sense is helping Donald Trump,” he said.