This is why third parties can’t win in presidential politics
This is why third parties can’t win in presidential politics
And this is why we should change that.
"Voting for a third party accomplishes one thing. It takes votes away from one of the other major-party candidates. Given that the status quo favors the Republican candidate – think the Electoral College – voting for a third party is probably going to take votes away from Joe Biden. Whatever you think of him, he’s better than the alternative. (The alternative, by the way, likes making jokes about being a dictator.)
Actually, it accomplishes another thing. It enriches presidential candidates for third parties that do not work in cooperation with one of the major parties. (It’s called “fusion voting.”) For instance, the Green Party — these people know they can’t win. They know the status quo prevents them from winning. They don’t say that, though. In the space between what they know and what their supporters don’t know is a scam. In the absence of systemic change, third parties that don’t cooperate with one of the major parties are inherently exploitative."
Would ranked choice voting help this? Genuine question looking for opinions. I tend to think it would, but that might be too optimistic with politics the way it is these days.
Yes, yes it would.
The way ranked choice works is that everyone’s first rank is tabulated.
If a candidate gets the majority vote in the first choices they win outright.
If not, the candidates with the fewest first choice is eliminated, and those that voted for them, they move on to their second choice picks.
Votes are now recounted. If no one still has a clear majority, the person with the lowest votes is again eliminated, with their voter’s votes going to the next rank in choosing.
You go through that until someone gets a majority.
Other similar systems include STAR voting, Score Voting, and Approval Voting.
I mean... none of that actually helps a third party at the presidential level. Or even addresses spoilers. Going to address your points out of order to make my own
If not, the candidates with the fewest first choice is eliminated, and those that voted for them, they move on to their second choice picks.
So... the third party candidates get eliminated in the first round. Because they cannot compete with the two big parties in terms of campaign funding. Assuming it doesn't end in the first round because...
If a candidate gets the majority vote in the first choices they win outright.
So the republican wins because there is one right wing fascist running against a dozen flavors of Left wing. Or the Democrat wins because all the third parties were a negligible percentage of the vote to begin with.
I HAVE seen proposals that change the ordering so that a third party "can't" be a spoiler (I forget the specifics but basically it is removing the small percentage votes first and only comparing once you downselect to N candidates where N is usually 2) but...
People confuse the idea of making a third party candidate viable with minimizing how much you are pissing away your vote by voting for a third party in the presidential election. Ranked choice is great for the latter but it still has many of the same spoiler problems without additional changes. And, arguably, would increase the impact of third party spoilers if one party over-splits. I continue to point people toward the mess in France where basically all the Left wing parties had to unite and make a coalition to MAYBE stop the right wing fascists.
Personally? I would much rather we abolish the electoral college and just do a popular vote. That will have a MUCH bigger impact on third party candidates because it suddenly becomes viable to run a national campaign where you convince maybe 15% of the overall populace rather than needing 40% of each county just to end up on the politico map. Because the latter is what really screws over third parties at the presidential level because they just don't have the money or resources to sway enough counties to get any meaningful electoral college votes. And ranked choice alone has no impact on that.
Yes, anything other than first past the post would help. Ranked choice, instant runoff, however you want to define it.
It would allow people to vote for a 3rd party without disenfranchising themselves.
Until then...
Approval voting would help, but neither party will ever vote in favor of it.
For the time being, it would effectively move fringe-party votes to the nearest major party - ensuring that e.g. Trump doesnt win if the majority of people had Harris or some third party candidate ranked above Trump.
Current “third” parties have a long way to go before they would end up in the winning slot - but, presuming the elimination rounds’ stats are published and not just the final winner, we could better gauge the support for them since voters could show preference for them on the ballot without “wasting their vote”.
After a while, evidence of sustained support may snowball, or a particularly compelling candidate may be ranked above a “major” party candidate on a majority of ballots - leading to a win.
Yes, though it’s not a magic bullet.
Here’s a video that compares Plurality/FPTP (our current system), Ranked choice, and approval voting, and is up-front about the limitations of each method.
Here’s a link with a lot more information on different voting methods. STAR voting is the method highlighted here as the best, but Score voting and Approval are also pretty good. IRV/Ranked Choice doesn’t perform quite as well, but is at least still better than FPTP.
A new voting system that’s any better than our current system brings us closer to a political landscape where viable candidates who choose not to drop out early aren’t working against their interests, and voters are less incentivized to vote strategically. And even if IRV is only marginally better than FPTP, its popularity gives exposure to the idea that alternative voting systems are worth looking into.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.
It's on the ballot statewide in six states so far, and it's already in action in a bunch of places. Almost everybody who isn't a malicious establishment politician likes it wherever it gets tried. Read the sticky post to learn more.
It depends how you look at it.
Ranked Choice is not going to make a third party viable at the presidential level. Simply because the other two parties have orders of magnitude more funding to campaign and make sure people know and "like" their candidates. And, depending on the implementation of ranked choice, it may still result in splitting the vote.
At the congressional representative level? Ranked choice has a lot of benefits there. But that is also the level where third party candidates are still viable under the current model.
The reality is that most of the things people want out of ranked choice we already have out of the primary system. Wide range of candidates run in the primary on each side. Primaries exist to figure out who The People like and to let the party down select. Done right, you have what would otherwise have been "third party" candidates who suddenly have a LOT of influence within the party (see: Bernie Sanders in 2020... less so in 2016) because they get a lot of influence on the platform in exchange for supporting the candidate who has the majority of the vote and the party backing.
The key is that people need to understand they are still compromising to get some of what they want AND to engage with their local (and even national) parties to make sure their voices are heard.
It would reduce the problem significantly. If we had RCV back in 1992 I can see most of Ross Periot's votes going to Bush senior as their 2nd or 3rd choice, winning him re-election.
Likewise I can see a lot of Greens votes in 2016 going to Clinton, with that being enough to give her the margin needed to win in the Electoral College.
Ranked voting still isn't perfect in this regard, see for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_voting#Defeat-dropping_Condorcet
Any third party presidential candidate that aligns mostly (or entirely) with one of the other parties but doesn't join them is at best chicken shit. If you can't convince half of the population which is closest to you politically, you're not going to convince the other half.
The only way a third party candidate would even theoretically work is if they were moderate (think Joe Manchin) where they would appeal to moderates from both parties.
Someone like Jill Stein has no business running outside of the Democratic Party. If she can't convince the Dems, she's not convincing the rest of the country. Running as a Dem and convincing 26% of voters is her best road to the presidency, but she knows she'll never get that much support.
I think even something like the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would also be better than our current system.
I'm not sure they should win. Watching the electoral dysfunction in Germany and Israel is a hard reminder of the bizzare contortions that party coalitions create.
I just wish the under 35 crowd voted in primaries at rates comparable to the elderly, then maybe we'd see policies that actually helped instead of being the lesser of two evils.
Well yeah, there are only so many votes to go around. Unless you can suddenly get a bunch of non-voters to form a new party they have to come from one of the two. That's kind of the idea, less influence for these two trash can fires of a party, more for something better. Everyone is just so afraid more will come from one party than the other and we'll be stuck with one dominating, so it never happens. It's quite the rock and a hard place.
No one party will equally draw from both Democrats and Republicans. Look at the implosion of "No Labels".
What needs to happen is for the progressives to abandon the Democrats and make their own party, and for the rational Republicans who have been leaving the Republican party since 2010 to form their own conservative party.
So from left to right you'd have:
Progressives---Corporate Democrats-Former Republicans---MAGA Republicans
Yeah, that sounds great. /s
I’m bloodfart and I’m voting third party this election!
The party for socialism and liberation is running on a platform of Palestinian statehood and an end to weapons shipments for Israel.
Loser.
I'm sure both of the people voting for that party in your area will be very happy. So will Trump.
gotta start somewhere. i'm not really interested in trump or what makes him happy.
It is near impossible to beat the duopoly when you're facing two sets of billionaire class donors and politics driven by fear. Trump and Harris are closer on Policy. Plus with the current system depending on your state your vote is almost preselected going to one person. Such as FL basically going to Trump for free. Why should I vote for someone I can't influence and who has pledged their loyalty to AIPAC money.
I know liberals don't care about the issues that drive voters to third parties in the 1st place, lol. It is always kick the can down the road or "We can vote a more progressive person in the future." It will never happen, so I might as well vote for someone I agree with.
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I’m not a partisan, but for the moment the Democrats cares about what I care about.
I’m not a political scientist, but I have taught political science. I’m not a partisan, but for the moment the Democrats cares about what I care about. I’m a journalist, writer and citizen. I’m a fellow at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College; a contributing writer for the Washington Monthly; a contributing editor for Religion Dispatches; and senior editor at Alternet and Raw Story. My byline has been in news outlets big and small, mostly small. Follow me @johnastoehr.
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