A New Slant on Voting Third Party

Going to be an interesting November this year.

Albion said:

A raft of recent polls shows an unexpected development.

While it's ordinarily said that voting for a third party candidate (Gary Johnson on the Libertarian ticket or Jill Stein of the Green Party), amounts to helping the major party candidate you don't favor...

...and considering that there are so many people who don't want Hillary but can't bring themselves to vote for Donald Trump...

...these polls consistently show that Trump gains, rather than loses, when the pollster allows the respondent to choose among three or four parties rather than just between Trump and Clinton.

Would this then permit a person who's "torn" to go ahead and vote for Johnson (or even Stein) and NOT see himself as electing Clinton as a result?

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Sounds like an argument for voting for Clinton.

It's interesting to read the NY Times data published today. Out of every single American, if you include people ineligible to vote, eligible people who don't ever vote, people who vote in general elections, but not the primaries, and those who voted in the primary election - only 9% of the American population chose Trump and Clinton. Those are some powerful statistics. Imagine if everyone eligible to vote did so and they did not feel shackled to the two-party system. We might, then, have viable third-party options.

katautumn said:

It's interesting to read the NY Times data published today. Out of every single American, if you include people ineligible to vote, eligible people who don't ever vote, people who vote in general elections, but not the primaries, and those who voted in the primary election - only 9% of the American population chose Trump and Clinton. Those are some powerful statistics. Imagine if everyone eligible to vote did so and they did not feel shackled to the two-party system. We might, then, have viable third-party options.

Click to expand...

People fear the spoiler effect...and I'll admit, it's a valid fear. For "voting your heart" to work, you'd need to get everyone else to do that same...and that's where it gets tricky.

Nobody wants to be the first person to step out of line and get in the other line because they're afraid nobody else will.

I think it makes a strong case for switching to the "Alternative Vote"...a system by which, instead of checking one name, you rank all the names. So you can put the person you like the best as #1, and rank the one you like the least as #4. It gives you the flexibility of both supporting the person you agree with the most, and voting against the person you like the least simultaneously without fear of the spoiler effect.