• pastabatman@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Are you sure we don’t understand it correctly? Trump won in 2016 in part due to the righteous indignation of people that refused to vote for Clinton. Third party spoiler candidates are not a new phenomenon.

    • HomerianSymphony@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Trump won in 2016 in part due to the righteous indignation of people that refused to vote for Clinton.

      And would those people have suddenly switched to Clinton if no third-party candidate was available?

      • pastabatman@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Most probably wouldn’t have voted at all but that doesn’t change the math. In a US presidential election, voting third party and not voting at all are equivalent in every practical sense.

        • HomerianSymphony@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          Right. So, part of the problem with “Voting third-party means supporting Trump” is that it presumes I would have otherwise voted for Biden.

          And I wouldn’t have. Because he’s committing genocide.

          Also, when third-party candidates start to get traction, they can pull votes away from Trump as well as Biden.

          And if enough people vote third-party, we can start to defeat both Trump and Biden. Even small amounts of support for third-party candidates can lead to a third-party winning seats in congress if that support is concentrated in particular districts, like college towns. And in an evenly divided congress, a few seats can control the balance of power and have a big impact.