I’m glad you’re sending a message about the two-party system in a way that actually matters. Voting third party in a state that will never change is like, the one time it’s safe and effective to do that.
Exactly, yet I get so much pushback on that.
Yes, if your state has any chance of flipping, choose the lesser of two evils. And don’t just look at the last election, look at the last 5 or so. If any of them were anywhere near close, vote for the lesser of two evils. Or if your state is trending toward being competitive, vote for the lesser of two evils. If you’re not willing to check, vote for the lesser of two evils.
But if your state consistently votes a certain way with a huge margin, then vote your conscience. For me, that’s the most popular third party.
believing your state is hard locked in one party is exactly the mindset that makes it hard locked. My state is ‘hard red’ but it wasn’t always like that. California was a solid red state but no longer is. Until we have ranked voting, we’re stuck with two parties at the federal level. Voting 3rd is only serves to signal to the majority parties where to not waste their energy.
Donald Trump actually showed up to the Libertarian National Convention, I don’t think such an arrogant dickwad would have bothered if he didn’t think it was important to appeal to third party voters. They already spend less time in their ‘safe’ states.
Voting 3rd is only serves to signal to the majority parties where to not waste their energy.
No, voting 3rd shows that voters are more willing to “throw their vote away” than support either major party candidate. If the minority candidate wants to snap up some of those votes, they’ll need to adjust their policies to at least bring in some of the top third party candidate’s views. The closer they get to those third parties, the more of those votes they’ll get.
If my state gets within a 10% spread, I’ll probably start voting for the lesser of two evils (in this case Harris). But when the spread is going to be something like 4x the total votes for all third parties combined (something like 5%; vote spread for major party candidates is typically >20%), there’s literally no value in supporting either major party candidate.
