this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2024
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I haven’t done the math. Assuming full support, is there a 3rd party candidate on the ballot in enough states to actually win?
No. Because even if they carried 100% of the vote in a state, the delegates can and most likely would just cast their votes for one of the major parties.
Do you mean the electors? Delegates are part of the nomination process, not the general election. The electors for a party are chosen by that party, then the voters cast votes for the electors. It's unlikely that electors pledged to third parties would be faithless, as they probably deeply identify with the party ideals.
The last time a 3rd party candidate had an actual shot (and it was a looooong shot at best) was in 1992 when Ross Perot ran. He split the R vote badly enough that it handed the election to Clinton.
So long as we're using first past the post a 3rd party candidate has a vanishingly small chance of doing anything other than helping elect the opposition.
And the lesson the Republican Party learned from that was to support the Greens—or any vaguely left party—hard.
Admittedly, watching PR play out across the rest of the world kinda scares me. Israel is paralyzed into a destructive war because the ruling party is in a coalition with a few crazy extremists who will bring down the government (and thus expose Netenyahu to criminal trial) if their increasingly wild demands aren't met. Germany's having a clusterfuck of a time etc.
While there would be different parties, imagine the horribleness of a PR system right now in America. You could easily see a scenario where RFK acts as kingmaker and gets to demand whatever from trump or Harris. Given that trump would sell his children (maybe sub Melania for Ivanka) for the presidency, who knows what insanity would ensue? And there would be no real mechanism between the election and the next one to reign them in.
I didn't think there was anything scarier than a trump presidency until thinking that one through. Uggggh.
Yes, I was there and that’s not what I was asking.
Nope. The Green party's got their candidate on the most states' ballots, and they only managed to get 38 states. Granted, it's still mathematically possible, considering the threshold is 270 votes, and the states that have Stein on the ballot comprise 440 votes... but still. Would be incredibly, almost impossibly difficult.
It doesn't even matter whether or not the Green party is technically able to win. As long as America has this first-past-the-post voting system, people will have to tactically vote for Democrats, because otherwise the Republicans will win. To stop the current duopoly, there needs to be an electoral reform first. It's probably nearly impossible to get that through but there's no other way.
Stein and Oliver both do, though that's certainly not going to make a difference in their actual chances