The more candidates in the race, the better for Donald J. Trump, supporters say. And in a tight presidential contest, a small share of voters could change the result.
This works because almost all the US uses first-past-the-post elections for the Presidential general election. So you get outcomes like this:
Scenario 1:
Biden: 10 votes
Trump: 9 votes
Kennedy/Stein/West: 0 votes
Biden wins the state
Scenario 2:
Biden: 9 votes
Trump: 9 votes
Kennedy/Stein/West: 1 vote
Tied vote, decided by game of chance/lawsuit
Scenario 3:
Biden: 8 votes
Trump: 9 votes
Kennedy/Stein/West: 2 votes
Trump wins the state
This is why you see huge financial support from Republican billionaires for third party candidates who have no chance of winning.
You can see the attempts even here on Lemmy to convince people to vote for a third party. Virtually anyone hyper focusing on Gaza and suggesting we should “show Biden what we think” is attempting to convince you to vote against your own interests.
Take a look at the post history of anyone who calls him genocide Joe, and you’ll see “subtle” suggestions to vote for a third party candidate.
Hit the nail on the head. Theres been noticeable push back these last 2 months, but i expect worse as we edge closer to november.
They also completely ignore bringing the Ukrainian genocide when its brought up, even though russia has repeatedly now called them a stepping stone in denazifying Eastern Europe.
For all of Status Quo Joe's issues (and theres a million) he still doesnt compare to trump (and his billions of issues) in terms of how much damage they can do/are doing to the country and the planet as a whole.
As much as I would love for there to be more options and the two-party system dismantled, voting third party right now in the presidential election is just stupid. A real third party has to start from the ground up or be a genuine splinter party from one of the two primary parties. Trump almost created a third party, but Republicans chose power over principle and party over country to make him their golden calf.
Not saying you are saying this, but it's as good a post as any on which to say it:
You can't dismantle the 2 party system by voting for a third party. Even in the extremely unlikely situation that that third party wins, it will just quickly, if not immediately, go back to a two party system. It's the nature of a FPTP voting system.
It's a process you have to start from the ground up. You can't just vote for a POTUS and then magically we have multiple parties. You have to focus on your local politics and get people into office who will push to get our voting system changed. And that will have to "trickle up." It's not something that will be solved overnight, and people focus too much on the POTUS, when they should be putting their effort in where they have the most influence: locally.
They're going after formerly reliable Republican votes that have had enough of Trump but don't really want to vote for Biden.
Those are very reliable voters and they don't want them staying home or voting for Biden. So they give them a shitty third-party candidate so they won't vote for Biden and still show up for the down ballot Republicans. Might take a few potential votes from Biden but that's only half the goal.
Yeah but he’s as fringe as trump just in different ways. Plus it’s the opposite of what they think will happen with the dem vote. Republicans who would otherwise vote Biden or stay home will hear Kennedy and think liberal. But near 0 dems will fall for the same trick.
His campaign is built around on attracting low-information voters, and he has a ton of money to do just that — Kennedy's vice-presidential pick is the former wife of a Google founder who broke up with him after allegedly sleeping with Musk.
That's not entirely true. There is one proven left-leaning group that can be drawn in by MAGA talking points, and that's the Antivax moms. During the height of the pandemic, QAnon influencers were pretty effective at getting the cruchy-granola-crystal-healing-antivax moms into Trump. The guys at the QAA Podcast covered it really well, but the indoctrination path was basically: The Vaccine is Bad-> The Pandemic is Fake/Overblown-> Face Masks Actually Help Child Traffickers ->You Know Who's Fighting Traffickers?Trump! Anyway, if an Antivax message can get these folks to support Trump, it can get them to support RFK.
I think it's more that the Republican party recognizes what an albatross Trump has become and are trying to mitigate the damage to down ballot Republicans by old-school Republicans staying home because they're fed up with Trump.
Polling. Right now the polls show RFK and West pulling from Biden more than Trump, which is why right wing strategists want to promote those candidates more.
They don't need that. All they need is to take more votes from Biden than they do from Trump. And the the polling makes it very clear that the 3rd party candidates as a group do exactly that. The benefit is something around a 3 percentage point advantage for Trump with the 3rd party candidates on the ballot vs not.
Yeah idk, I haven't heard any Dems say they're going to break from Biden for someone like RFK, the dude is an anti science nut job and at least my circles see right through it. I have heard trumpists say they'd consider him if trump ended up in jail or whatever though. 🤷
Consider the possibility that the game here does not depend on Trump winning in the Electoral college- all that needs to happen is Biden not winning 271 or more EC votes for the congress to decide the presidency via the Contingent Election process outlined in article2, sec1 clause3 of the constitution, later modified in the 12th amendment.
In that scenario, each state delegation has 1 vote- and the GOP has enough state-level gerrymanders to control enough state delegations that if it comes to pass that the 12th Amendment process decides the presidency, they are very likely going to be able to install whoever they want.
If the smart money in the GOP has decided Trump won't win but it still wants him in the oval, anything that prevents Biden from getting 270+ gets them better odds than any other pathway
In that scenario, each state delegation has 1 vote- and the GOP has enough state-level gerrymanders to control enough state delegations that if it comes to pass that the 12th Amendment process decides the presidency, they are very likely going to be able to install whoever they want.
I'm not so sure of this. On paper, the split is 27-23 in favor of Republicans. However, there are 3 Republican governors in Democrat states that voted for Biden: Nevada, Vermont, and New Hampshire. The question becomes whether those 3 Republican governors would override the votes of the people in their state and install Trump even though the voters voted for Biden? I'm not so sure any of them would want to go down in history as having effectively ignored the election and installing a dictator. I mean....they could. Anything's possible. But if you're a Republican governor in a Democrat state that voted for the Democrat nominee, do you really want to be the one to ignore that, essentially tell the public that their votes don't matter, and install Trump as a dictator?
If all 3 Republican governors in Dem states honor the will of the people, it would essentially be a 26-24 split in favor of Democrats. Even if only two of the 3 states do, we'd end up in a tie. Either way, I don't think that sending it to the governors would be a guaranteed win for Trump. Significantly more likely, yes. But a slam-dunk win? No. There would be absolutely enormous pressure on those 3 governors who would basically be deciding the election.
One thing we should expect is for all of the “major” third party candidates — Kennedy, Stein, West — to be funded in part by ultra-high-net-worth Republicans. That’s already happening to some degree.
Sorry—my comment was in reference to this not being a new playbook since that’s exactly what the GOP did with hawking Kanye as a candidate. He would never win but maybe he would steal votes from the democrats.
This is fucking asinine. How do you possibly think that anyone who would vote for kanye West or RFK would otherwise be Biden voters you dummy. Do you not understand that the Nazis in the vaccine conspiracy heads are all conservatives, who would vote for Trump?
The third party candidates you have to worry about stealing votes from only Biden or Jill Stein Dr. West and Claudia de Lacruz. So congrats you got Jill Stein right. Now compare the share of the vote. RFK is getting compared to Jill Stein and the others. Dumbass.
This insane worldview where anything that's not a vote for Biden is a vote for Trump is fucking crazy and it's why no one likes neoliberals.
This is such a dumb take. The strategy has worked numerous times throughout history. "Well it didn't work for Clinton. . .so obviously it's dumb!" is such a narrow-view, mindlessly parroting a talking point.
This goes on the false narrative that 3rd party voters would support a duopoly candidate if there were no 3rd party options. If Biden wanted to earn our votes he should have started about 30 years ago.
Are these different than the hundreds of women who are dying because of abortion law changes that happened while Biden was President because he failed to stack the supreme Court like he said he would?