Ok people gather around and let me tell you why voting for a third party candidate is tantamount to taking your ballot out of the booth and throwing it in the garbage after you’ve waited in line all day to vote!
The first thing that you need to realize is that every single vote holds value. That value isn’t exactly what you think it is, its value is definitively attached to the party affiliation that you are registered under. So if you are a Democrat, then your vote holds value for the Democratic Party, and vise versa for Republicans.
This is why Dems do voter registration drives in Democratic leaning areas to try to sign up more Democrats, they want to register more voters for their party, not for the other party, and they have this down to a science. How often do you here about Republicans doing voter registration drives in Chicago or New York, they’ll do them in the surrounding GOP leaning suburbs, but not in the inner cities and downtown. The reason for this is that you can not tell people who to register with, which means that if I showed up to register in a GOP held area, it’s against the law for them to throw my registration out, which means that they are registering me to help their opposition. So holding it in predominantly GOP or Dem areas will net more party registrations that fall inline with the party that’s doing the drive.
Now that you got that, you need to understand that in 2014 in the US there were 142.166 million registered voters, which comes out to be 64% of the voting age population, which should be higher for the 2016 election.
But using these numbers we now need to take a look at what percentage of voters are registered Democrat, Republican or Independent. As of Sept 2016 Gallup says that 40% of all voters are registered as Independents, 32% as Democrats and 27% as Republicans. But when taking into consideration, which way Independents lean in a two party system; Democrats edge out Republicans 49% to 44%. This leaves 7% for the other parties like the Green and Libertarian Party.
So in an election, I’ll round off the 142.166 million to an easier manageable number, 142 million people are divided into these party affiliations.
That gives the Democrats approximately 69.58 million voters, Republicans, 62.48 million voters and the remaining 9.94 million voters go to the other two parties to equal a rounded out 142 million registered voters. (Once again these numbers have went up over the past two years in pretty much the same way that they leaned back then)
Now lets take a look at the gap between the two major parties, there is only a 7.1 million difference between the two parties. This is why every vote counts, that’s about 5-6% of the total vote, so losing an actual vote to the opposing party, as in crossing party lines to vote, gives the other party a two vote swing, because it takes one away from the Dems and gives it to the GOP or vise versa. This actually means that the gap isn’t actually 7.1 million; it’s more like 3.55 million, so now you begin to see how every vote actual counts even more if you cross party lines.
If you are a registered Democrat and you decide to vote third party, then you’re doing the same thing but a little differently because the Dems lose a vote, but the Republicans don’t gain the extra vote, and they do close the gap by that vote, without needing that vote to go in as a Republican ballot. Basically for every registered Democrats vote that goes to a third party candidate, the Republican closes the 3.55 million voter gap, which makes it easier to win. The same goes for people who decide not to vote. Every vote that isn’t cast shortens the voter gap between the two parties, this is why Republicans always try to suppress the voter turnout, it helps them especially when voter registration trends skew heavily towards liberal values as opposed to conservative values, which means Democrats are registering more voters than Republicans and it shows.
In Sept 2014 it was 42% independent, 30% Democrat and 26% Republican, with it leaning 48% Dem to 44% GOP, that’s a 4% gap going the liberal way. But now in 2016 Republicans have only gained 1% point on their base, Independents lost 2% and Democrats gained 2% to their base. The difference comes in at how independents lean, republicans stayed at 44% and the Dems ticked up an extra percentage point. So Republican added 1% to their base and no extra leaning votes over 2 years and Dems added 2% to their base and an extra percentage point to the leaning vote, which gives them a 3% boost over a 1% boost for the GOP. This might not sound like much but that actually adds up to more than 4.2 million new voters to their approximate 1.5, which means that Liberals are adding close to 3 times as many voters to their bottom line than Conservatives. If this trend keeps up, Dems will have over 10 million more voters either solid or leaning Democratic by the 2020 election!
What this means is that the GOP will never be able to win another national election unless they make it harder for people to vote (suppression) or make people apathetic to the voting process altogether (depression), which helps keep people at home and not voting at all.
Now take into consideration the only other path to victory for Republicans, a spoiler candidate, a candidate that can take votes from the Democrats side of the equation, not theirs. This is the Jill Stein vote! She has no numerical way of winning because there aren’t enough voters left after 93% go to the two major parties. She can’t win any state. But Gary Johnson is the spoiler for the Republicans, and Evan McMullin in Utah will upset Trumps chances in that state, but neither of these three have a chance to win any state besides Evan in Utah, which helps Hillary because Donald wont get the electoral votes from that state.
So what we see is, there aren’t enough voters in the gap for a third party candidate to actually win the nomination, the very best that one could possibly do is stop one of the two major party candidates from getting to 270, which benefits the other.
Even if a third party candidate mounted a campaign that made neither of the major party candidates reach the required 270, the third party candidate still will not be able to win the presidency.
The reason for this is that the House of Representatives then are tasked with the job of voting for the new president. With a quick scan of the House, you realize real fast that out of the 435 members and not one of them is from the Green or Libertarian Party. This means that they have no one from their party that will vote for them if 270 isn’t reached. Explain to me why would a Democrat or Republican member of the House vote for Stein or Johnson to be the next President over Hillary or Donald? What would make them cross party lines to vote third party when most of them wouldn’t even cross party lines to stop Donald?
So if no party reaches 270 electoral votes, the seat of the presidency will go to whoever controls the House of Representatives, and right now that’s the GOP, which means Trump will be our next president. At this point we do not know if Democrats will be able to retake the House, and because of that we cant risk letting a third party candidate throw a monkey wrench into the electoral college!
Democrats need to vote for Hillary and stop all this nonsensical talk about voting their conscience. Republicans have denounced Trump for multiple things that he ahs said and done and took back their endorsements, but all of them say that they will still vote for him. Think about that, they don’t like him, unendorsed him but are still going to vote for him! Why? Because they feel like no matter what he’s a better option than Hillary! How many Republicans do you think are going to vote third party come Nov 8?
Wake up people, the GOP will be out voting in force for Donald on election day, and as long as they can depress and suppress enough Democrat voters they can win this election.
If too many Democrats vote for one of the third party candidates, all you’re doing is taking something that held value and throwing it away in an effort to lay claim to a symbolic fuck you to the system, because no matter what you do, one of the two major party candidates is going to win anyway. So that fuck you that you directed towards the system will respond in kind, because you’re fucking yourself if you allow Trump to win the candidacy, install his picks on the Supreme Court, and bring his policies to fruition!