Going into the election, many feared that Jill Stein would be the key factor in inadvertently securing the presidency for Donald Trump. After all, third-party candidates had decided elections before—notably in the race for the White House in 2000. In the state which decided the presidency, George W Bush received 2,912,790, compared to Al Gore who received 2,912,253—yet it is undeniable that Gore failed to take the key state of Florida as a result of 97,488 of the electorate casting their votes for Ralph Nader. However, Stein underperformed, gathering just 685,550 votes nationally.

Fears had begun to develop in the weeks prior to the polls opening of her potential detrimental effect on the outcome among Stein’s Green Party colleagues in Europe. The European Green published a statment on November 1st: “Donald Trump has promised that if he becomes President again, he will extend abortion bans, deny members of the LGBTQIA+ community their rights, and deport migrants en masse. We are clear that Kamala Harris is the only candidate who can block Donald Trump. We call on Jill Stein to withdraw from the race, and endorse Kamala Harris for the presidency of the United States”. Intriguingly, when it comes to the concerns of the European Greens of the denial of “members of the LGBTQIA+ community their rights” or fears over limiting access to abortions, such accusations could be levelled not only at “The Donald” but Stein’s running mate Butch Ware.

In an interview with The Black Authority, Ware stated “I don’t think that biological males should play in female sports. I think it gives an unfair competitive advantage”, as well as stating: “Of course, there should be limits on everything. I won’t go into the finer points of it, but of course there have to be limitations,” when Ware was asked if there ought to be limitations on abortion. Either the European Greens were unaware to the opinions of Ware, or they consciously decided to not criticise them in an act of inexcusable hypocrisy. Disregarding concerns “progressives” on the left would have had with the Green Party over the remarks of Ware, many Americans were perturbed by the attitudes of Stein on foreign policy. From her baseless claim that that NATO “pursued a policy of basically encircling Russia”; to her lie that the US “helped foment a coup (The Revolution of Dignity in 2014 against pro-Putin President Viktor Yanukovych) against a democratically-elected government”, before egregiously claiming that the post-revolution government contained “ultra-nationalists and ex-Nazis”, Stein has made a habit of not only propagating Kremlin conspiracy theories, but also fundamentally misunderstanding the integral role NATO plays in fostering security for former Soviet states who have become NATO members; a right they are afforded under the NATO–Russia Founding Act 1997, which specifies the “door to membership will remain open to all emerging European democracies.”

Alongside these deceptions, animosity to her candidacy rose exponentially following her interview with Mehdi Hasan on the October 10th, as during the interview, Stein refused to call Vladimir Putin a war criminal, before lying that no arrest warrant had been issued by the ICC, when in fact there had been a warrant issued in March 2023.

Aside from her shameful reticence to condemn Putin, Stein squirmed when questioned if she thought Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was a war criminal. “Yes,” Stein replied, “in so many words, yes, we have said as much”, after a period of heavy deliberation. For reference, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has attributed 83,500 civilian deaths to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as well as detailing the illegal use of chlorine gas and torture by Assad forces. To conclude, the Green Party failed to break through not only because they succeeded in alienating progressives, but the majority of the electorate, due to Stein’s flagrant pandering to war criminals and vilification of self-determining former Soviet states.