What??
In Michigan Gary Johnson got 172,136 votes, in Pennsylvania he got 146,715, and in Wisconsin he got 106,674. If all Greens voted Clinton and all Libertarians voted Trump then New Mexico would’ve only been won by Clinton with around 1,000 votes, Colorado would’ve also been nearly Trump. Nevada, New Hampshire, and Minnesota would’ve been won by Trump. Maine might’ve gone majority Trump.
Third parties hurt Trump more than they help him, because Libertarians would not have voted Clinton.
And how many of them are running now? This isn’t about them, this is about the one third party candidate that actually makes headlines.
The Green party gets more attention in left-leaning circles because there are people sympathetic to it and there are people who want to blame them for the Democrats losing. It’s not because they’re actually more popular than the Libertarian party, which regularly gets like 3 times as many votes.
2020: 1,865,917 (LP); 405,034 (GP) 2016: 4,489,359; 1,457,216 2012: 1,275,923; 469,627 2008: 523,713; 161,797 2004: 397,265; 119,859
So it’s completely wrong to say that “there aren’t any right-wing third parties making any kind of a meaningful run.” It’s just that your perception of how popular the Libertarian party is compared to the Greens is distorted.
At the same time, the way that the EC favors the GOP causes the spoiler effect of the Green Party to be amplified compared to Libertarians.
The Green Party is far more left-wing than the Libertarian Party is right-wing.
How does that contradict what I said. Also the LP is still further right than the GOP
If all third-party candidates had to vote for one of the two main candidates, I think nearly all of the Green Party votes would go to the Democrat, while the Libertarian votes would be much more of a split.
