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Why are they assuming that those third-party votes would've gone to Mrs. Clinton? I thought of them mostly as people who despised hillary as much as we do, but felt they had no place to go. If they hadn't chosen one of them, they mostly would've written in Sanders, Kucinich, some backstabbing globalist, world peace (or whatever) or stayed home.

I'd suspect that some of Trump's margin of victory in a few close states are people Trump won over, and that's why Johnson and Stein weren't left with many votes. (These analysts haven't improved after their total humiliation)

Why are they assuming that those third-party votes would've gone to Mrs. Clinton? I thought of them mostly as people who despised hillary as much as we do, but felt they had no place to go. If they hadn't chosen one of them, they mostly would've written in Sanders, Kucinich, some backstabbing globalist, world peace (or whatever) or stayed home.

The political establishment believes that they own our votes, so that any vote for a third party is "taken" from their candidates. You're absolutely right that many (perhaps most) people who vote for third parties would just stay home if they didn't have that option. When they insist that these votes would have mostly gone to Hillary, they're just assuming that liberal votes somehow belong to the Democrats and conservative votes belong to the GOP. For me at least, Perot was never a spoiler since I wouldn't have supported Dole or Bush regardless.

Why are they assuming that those third-party votes would've gone to Mrs. Clinton? I thought of them mostly as people who despised hillary as much as we do, but felt they had no place to go. If they hadn't chosen one of them, they mostly would've written in Sanders, Kucinich, some backstabbing globalist, world peace (or whatever) or stayed home.

I agree with you. These voters would have voted for Clinton if that was who they wished to vote for. The same ballot that contained Gary Johnson's name and Jill Stein's name, also contained the name of Hillary Clinton. Voters made their own choice as is their right.

"Pundits" do not have the right to force people to vote for the pundit's choice of candidate.