The most successful 3rd party candidate in modern political history was H. Ross Perot in 1992.
He won 0 states and 0 electoral college votes, but got 18.9% of the popular vote.
Nobody since has come close, not even Perot himself in his aborted 1996 run where he hit 8.4%.
Exactly. This is a well written piece on the history of the effects of third-party candidates on first-past-the-post elections.
Until we implement ranked-choice voting or a similar alternative, voting for a third-party candidate is equal to abstaining from the election.
Sincerely,
A guy who voted for Nader in 2000 who then could only protest Bush and Cheney’s blood for oil wars.
The only time a protest vote makes sense is if your state is going to have an overage anyway.
I voted Nader in 2000 as well due to:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipper_Gore
and:
https://www.ign.com/articles/joe-lieberman-outspoken-video-game-critic-mortal-kombat-obituary
But I also knew, in my state, voting for Nader made zero difference.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election_in_Oregon
Aaaand it didn’t.
Multnomah Gore - 188,441 - 63.52%
Bush - 83,677 - 28.20%
Nader - 21,048 - 7.09%Imagine the difference a Gore win would have made.
Gore did win, he just didn’t fight for it enough:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jan/29/uselections2000.usa
inconsequential fun fact: Tipper Gore is part of an SCP Foundation story arc, starting from here. It’s pretty well written, even if it does not have to do anything with the discussion here.
I’d prefer Approval Voting, RCV has really been over-sold and it practically the same to FPTP anyway. In RCV elections, the first round winner ultimately wins the race 96% of the time. That article tries to claim it somehow makes a difference in campaigns, but in a practical sense, it doesn’t. Campaigns rarely say “rank me second,” because of course not. Who would aim for second place? It also has unfortunate consequences with disenfranchising poor and minority communities, because they end up submitting invalid ballots at a significantly higher rate.
Anyway, so if you’re all like “stop attacking RCV it’s better than FPTP!” Well, I agree, but use that energy to run a referendum campaign and switch your local elections to Approval Voting instead. It’s used in both Fargo and St. Louis and we’re seeing the same positive effects that RCV has without the voter disenfranchisement.
I agree with using Approval Rating over RCV. However I don’t agree that RCV would yield the same results as FPTP in our heavily polarized Presidential election political climate. With most citizens putting a third-party candidate between their party and the opposing party, third-parties would be quickly identified as the ideal place for a moderate candidate. PACs would immediately capitalize on that opportunity to maintain a centrist in office. It could potentially yield worse results in the long term.
I’d love to see the National Popular Vote bill get passed. It’s gotten much closer since its inception. 209/270 electoral votes in total have signed. It would circumvent the Electoral College and equalizing the voting power of citizens over land, and be a massive step towards ease of implementation of new voting systems.
I agree that the National Popular Vote is a fantastic idea. I can’t wait to see it hit the threshold and immediately get hit with lawsuits from terrified entrenched powers.
I strongly disagree that RCV would have a significant effect on the presidential campaign, since it has already been shown to have little effect on any other campaign. It’s also ubiquitous in Australia, with a similar two-party forcing when implemented for their single-seat elections. The only reason they have third parties is because of their proportional elections.
Would you say that those elections were as polarized as our presidential elections are? Do you see my concern regarding all voters choosing their own party first, third-party second, and opposing party third? If first choice is split nearly 50/50, wouldn’t that put the third-party candidate at the top?
No? Under the usual American implementation of RCV only the highest ranked candidate on a ballot gets the vote from that ballot. If no one has a majority of the remaining votes the person in last place is eliminated and their votes are redistributed according to the individual ballot preferences. So if the American presidency was ~50/50 red v blue as first choices (with a few people picking third party candidates) whichever third party candidate that took last place would get eliminated. In fact, mathematically speaking, if red and blue each got at least 1/3 of the first place cuts votes, one of them must be the eventual winner and the other must take second place.
There are other systems that could cause chaos with your suggested rankings, but they’re generally not considered serious methods exactly because they are chaotic under reasonable circumstances.
That makes much more sense. I grossly misunderstood the basis of RCV. Thanks!
Edit: You sent me down a rabbit hole. lol
“What does success look like for third-party candidates?” - non-existent until we get past FPTP. Why is this a headline?
Because in a democracy we can vote for whomever we choose. Biden, Trump, third party, write in, no vote.
Seems the party that’s going to save democracy doesn’t like democracy very much.
Unfortunately our democracy is flawed, and our election system punishes similar candidates who run against each other in the general election.
Because of this, our political parties are more like coalitions, made up various groups with overlapping goals, who choose one candidate through a primary, so that they don’t cannibalize each other in the general election.
This means that those who run third party anyway are either looking for publicity, cynically playing the spoiler, or fools.
Ah but not just anyone can win…only the person who gets more than 270 ec votes… otherwise Congress just gets to choose
Vice presidency’
The only reason RFK is running is to make Biden look like a moderate.
No, like Jill Stein he’s just grifting. He’s gotten tens of millions of dollars donated.
He’s grifting for the DNC
He’s gotten tens of millions of dollars from large money RNC donors, my peaceful friend.
Is that like the DNC funding Republican miderm campaigns?
Is that supposed to be a gotcha? I’m asking because you entirely dodged the fact that he’s grifting the republicans, which calls your point into question.
It would be stupid if the Dems didn’t also fund third party candidates. That doesn’t change the fact that Kennedy and Stein are grifting Republican money to try to run as spoilers. You’re so all in on the line about democrats being evil I really have to question whether you’re arguing in good faith.
run as spoilers implies we would vote for either senile pedo if there were no other options.
