In our First-Past-the-Post voting system voting for a third party means the candidate you hate the most has an easier time winning.
For example:
You have 3 candidates in an election, A, B, and C
You like candidate A but their from a small party, you don't like B, and you hate C.
Candidate A and B are similar in some regards but differ in some things you feel are massively important. Candidate B and C are very different on most issues. C even talks about wanting to end democracy as we know it.
In the election A gets 25%, B gets 35%, and C gets 40%.
C is declared the winner as they got the highest percentage even though 60% of people didn't want them to win.
This is why third party candidates are often referred to as "spoiler candidates" here in the states. They split the vote of a major party making another party have an easier time winning.
Does this suck? Abso-fucking-lutely yes.
Is our current system pretty fucked? Again, yes.
Will letting candidate C have an easier time winning fix this problem? No, no it will not.
There are more elections than just the presidential election, participate in those too as they are also very very important. Call your local representatives, try to gain support for getting a better system in your state. Talk with people in your community about how our current system is pretty borkedand ways to fix it. Fixing our voting system will (unfortunately) take time and a lot of local efforts all over the country. In my home state there's currently a push for ranked choice voting that's gathering more support, it will only succeed if people talk about it with each other and push for it together.
Unfortunately this presidential election I'm going to vote for Biden even though I'm not a big fan. Trump (or any Republican for that matter) is so much worse than him though.
Absolutely reach out to your representatives (I even encouraged it in my comment)
They're your representatives, they represent the opinions of their constituents.
Especially reach out to your local reps as they are way more likely to be easily reachable. And your local reps are going to have way more access to other reps than you do.
The vote isn't decided by how many absolute votes someone gets. It's decided by how many votes they get relative to their opponent. A vote for a third party candidate is a -1 to Biden's absolute vote count, which is a +1 to Trump's relative vote count, which, again, is what actually matters.
Smartasses like OP like to make these types of statements --- and they'll refuse to acknowledge anything because they'll always appeal to a literal claim which, by construction, cannot be. In this case, a vote for X is not literally a vote for Trump; it may be effectively, mathematically, or implicitly a vote for Trump, but because it is not literally voting for Trump they just smile like an inebriated donkey and say "nuh-uh not the same lol XD."
It's typically a safe assumption as most of the time when people are talking about voting third party the third party candidate is most similar to the Democrat on the ballot.
But of course if the person wasn't going to vote if the third party candidate wasn't on the ballot then their lack of a vote is ensuring that the candidate they like the least has an easier time winning.
Libertarians absolutely count tho. I still hear people blame Gary Fucking Johnson of all people for trump winning sometimes xD most 3rd parties are admittedly more likely to get left votes than right, but libertarians are the biggest 3rd party, and most who vote for them sure as fuck wouldn't go blue. And tbh a lot of 3rd party voters prob just wouldn't vote for dems period. I was really close to not voting for biden in 20, and I'm even closer to that this year
We’re talking specifically about people who want a more progressive candidate who won’t back a genocide. No, I don’t think such people are likely to vote for Trump.
People with leftist principles aren’t equally likely to support all candidates in an election. You have to take the sampling bias into account.
Funny how a vote for any 3rd party candidate is magically a vote against whoever you like most. Fuck off libtard, earn my vote don't fucking browbeat me for it
Like real shit how does that logic work? This does nothing to explain how 3rd party = trump. By that logic it's also a vote against trump (implying there's actually logic here and not liberals just assuming they're entitled to all the votes forever no matter what)
This is only aimed at people who would otherwise have voted for Biden. Anyone who would have otherwise voted for Trump, after everything that has happened, is a lost cause and isn't worth any consideration at all
Who the fuck is telling people that smugness in the face of possible fascism, dictatorship, and oppression is an acceptable excuse for leftism. This shit is starting to get disgusting.
Total votes don't matter. Trump has never won a popular election. Net votes matter.
If you live in a blue state go wild: follow your conscious. Live your dreams.
If you live in a swing state: practice harm reduction and vote for the less evil genocidal geezer. Because a vote for anyone besides the two is a vote favoring the worse option.
You still don't seem to get it, every vote for a third party, is one more vote that Biden has to overcome to get to the majority, Trump doesn't need to bother with this as his personality cult seemingly won't fracture, thereby every third party vote fucks Biden over just a little bit more.
Now this isn't directly adding to Trump's total, but it's fucking Biden by decreasing his, and anything that fucks over Biden will objectively help Trump.
My guess is they’re being intentionally obtuse. What an edgelord intellectual. Best to ignore and move on. Let them get their dopamine hits from pulling wings off a fly.
I realized after commenting that this was the same dude claiming that the Moscow Concert Attack was actually planned by the CIA or State Department or another US Org.
Something else that gets missed is that the GoP tends to be one solid voting block - They vote pretty monolithically. As such, it almost always benefits the GoP when one votes third party. It's similar to why the GoP can get stuff passed when in power and the Dems can't - In fighting and arguments split up votes for only one side, typically
