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CNN hosting Green Party town hall

Posted at 7:41 AM, Aug 05, 2016
and last updated 2016-08-05 07:41:32-04

CNN announced Wednesday it will host one of its town hall events with the Green Party’s presumptive presidential nominee Jill Stein and her presumptive running mate, Ajamu Baraka.

The hour-long event will be held on Wednesday, August 17 at 10:00 p.m. ET. The event will broadcast live on CNN, CNN International, CNN en Espanol and online via CNNgo.

Stein has consistently polled as the fourth-most popular option in the presidential race, after Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and Libertarian Gary Johnson. In the most recent CNN/ORC poll, Stein received 5% support nationwide, four points behind Johnson, her nearest competitor.

Like Johnson, who has now been featured in two CNN town hall events, Stein also ran in 2012, but failed to gain traction. When the race was over, the FEC says she earned 470,000 votes or .36% of the popular vote. The Green Party’s high-water mark was Ralph Nader’s 2000 run, where he got nearly 3% of the vote nationwide.

This time around, Stein has hoped to capitalize on Clinton’s low favorability ratings and the breakout performance of the self-declared Democratic Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders.

While Sanders endorsed Clinton and has pledged to ensure she becomes the next president, Stein has spent much of her efforts appealing to Sanders’ most diehard supporters. She has claimed the support of some of them, including the scholar Cornel West.

She spent much of the Democratic National Convention directly participating in protests against Clinton’s candidacy and has often equated Clinton with Trump.