Third parties certainly know what effect they have. Their motivation is not to make the second party candidate win. Their motivation is to change the first party candidate.
According to Hotelling’s Law, a two-party political system with FPTP voting results in candidates that are very similar. This is why the Democrats won’t run real progressives for most offices, and why Sanders was forced out in 2016 with the excuse that he wasn’t “electable” enough.
Third parties running for president aren’t trying to win. They’re trying to eat some of the votes on their side, thus pulling the main party candidates toward that third party candidate to reclaim those votes.
Third parties certainly know what effect they have.
Third party candidates that are running specifically in presidential elections and nothing else.
Third parties that actually want to move the needle participate in local elections, caucus with a major party for ballot access, etc. (WFP)
Their motivation is not to make the second party candidate win.
Bullshit.
Green’s team literally stated the goal was for Kamala to lose.
https://www.nj.com/politics/2024/10/harris-vs-trump-spoiler-says-the-quiet-part-out-loud.html
You can find others if you’d like to look, quite easily.
Edited to add the quote from Sawant:
We are not in a position to win the White House, but we do have a real opportunity to win something historic, we could deny Kamala Harris the state of Michigan. And the polls show that most likely Harris cannot win the election without Michigan.
Its pretty clear the goal there.
