Third party candidates will appear on the ballot again this year for president. The number of votes they receive is a fraction of the two major candidates, but their impact can be enormous. It certainly seemed to tilt the scales In some states back in 2016. Here’s a recap of what happened thanks to the AP:
Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in Michigan by fewer than 11,000 votes that year while left-leaning Green Party candidate Jill Stein netted over 51,000 and Libertarian Gary Johnson won 172,000. In Wisconsin, Trump won by about 23,000 votes, fewer than Stein’s 32,000. And in Pennsylvania, Stein’s 49,000 votes eclipsed the margin by which Trump defeated Clinton.
A recent ABC News poll shows that as many as 7% of likely voters could vote for a third-party candidate this time around. That said, NBC adds that it doesn’t look like other candidates will have as much of an impact this year:
Ron Nielson, who managed former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson’s 2016 Libertarian campaign, said in an interview. “I’m not discounting the candidates running, but they don’t have the persona and the charisma has never been developed in those campaigns to capture in the moment. There’s just nothing happening.”
But both campaigns worry about what happens if the race is close in certain states. And the big question is, if there weren’t third-party candidates, would those same voters be likely to pick Joe Biden, Trump, or skip voting altogether? A wide belief among Democrats is that “a vote for a third-party candidate is a vote for Trump.”
NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. It is a vote for Trump and SOOO selfish. This is a do or die moment for democracy. No third party candidate will win. Your protest vote is a vote for Trump.
— VeganLeftovers (@VeganLeftovers) October 11, 2020
One person who is getting a lot of pushback is John Bolton. Despite calling his former boss, Donald Trump, “naive and dangerous,” the former National Security Advisor says he will be writing in a candidate.
Then, there are those like Ken Bone. He was the “undecided” voter who went viral after asking a question at a 2016 presidential debate. The man who became known as the red-sweater guy endorsed Andrew Yang in the Democratic primaries this year but was skewered after saying he voted for a third-party candidate last week.
So what do you tell your friends who may be thinking about voting third party or putting in a write-in candidate? Here’s a good way to explain it, thanks to comedian Steve Hofstetter.
*This post contains opinion and analysis
