occasion, Nader answered this question with: "No, not at all ... There may be a cold shower for four years that would help the Democratic Party ... It doesn't matter who is in the White House." Spoiler controversy In the 2000 presidential election in Florida, George W. Bush defeated Al Gore by 537 votes. Nader received votes, which led to claims that he was responsible for Gore's defeat. Nader disputes that he helped Bush to win. A 2003 study found that Nader's candidacy was a critical factor in Bush's victory. A 2004 study found that Nader voters had the profile of likely voters with a preference for Democratic candidates. They were therefore likely to vote for Gore over Bush in the absence of Nader's candidacy. A study by Harvard Professor B.C. Burden in 2005 showed Nader did "play a pivotal role in determining who would become president following the 2000 election", but that: However, Jonathan Chait of The American Prospect and The New Republic notes that Nader did indeed focus on swing states disproportionately during the waning days of the campaign, and by doing so jeopardized his own chances of achieving the 5% of the vote he was aiming for. Then there was the debate within the Nader campaign over where to travel in the waning days of the campaign. Some Nader advisers urged him to spend his time in uncontested states such as New York and California. These states – where liberals and leftists could entertain the thought of voting Nader without fear of aiding Bush – offered the richest harvest of potential votes. But, Martin writes, Nader – who emerges from this account as the house radical of his own campaign – insisted on spending the final days of the campaign on a whirlwind tour of battleground states such as Pennsylvania and Florida. In other words, he chose to go where the votes were scarcest, jeopardizing his own chances of winning 5 percent of the vote, which he needed to gain federal funds in 2004. When Nader, in a letter to environmentalists, attacked Gore for "his role as broker of environmental voters for corporate cash," and "the prototype for the bankable, Green corporate politician," and what he called a string of broken promises to the environmental movement, Sierra Club president Carl Pope sent an open letter to Nader, dated October 27, 2000, defending Al Gore's environmental record and