Is a 3rd Party vote a wasted vote?

[Anung Un Rama]

It depends, but I would say so long as your voting for something you believe in, or against something you find abhorrent, then no, a third party vote is not a wasted vote.

If the 2 major candidates were Stalin and Hitler, would voting for third party candidate Lincoln, because you find genocide and slavery and autocracy abhorrent, be a wasted vote? Even if one of the major candidates won by a landslide you would have exercised your opinion and right, which would be reflected in outcomes data and hopefully respected by the candidate in power.

Now, if Stalin and Lincoln were the major candidates and you voted for Hitler as the third party candidate because, while you were against genocide and slavery, you just can’t stand top hats and men without mustaches, then you’re just a cunt.

 

[Jack V Savage]

But do you think the representation is equal though? Yes the person with the most votes will win, but it's nearly impossible for an independent candidate to ever have a realistic chance to have the most votes.

Because the major parties have pitches that are built around the preferences of the public.

The majority of the population won't even know who they are. When people turn on their tv, read their news, hear their friends talk, all they'll know about is "Trump vs Dem Winner" and "Trump vs Dem Winner debate". Some third party guy/gal can't win unless they have Perot/Bloomberg money to pay for their exposure. If we're talking about electing leaders, I think that's a problem in itself since you only have two realistic options at all times, even if there were more available. We can't discuss their policy positions, because no one even knows who they are to vote for them or have a discussion.

Again, there's only going to be one winner. So it has to be someone who has very broad appeal, which will necessarily mean someone who disappoints most individual voters. That's how democracy works, and it's by design. There are significant differences between the practice of selecting presidents and the intention (the plan was no parties at all, people vote for unpledged electors who make their own decisions that would likely not lead to a majority but would give the House a short list that they'd vote for), but that aspect was built in. We want to frustrate the ambitions of extremists. And a third-party candidate who truly was viable--that is, who had the necessary experience and a popular agenda--would get a lot of attention even without being rich (plus, of course, a popular candidate would draw a lot of money).

 

[Anung Un Rama]

Not a War Room regular obviously. I’m just curious why people think a 3rd Party vote is a wasted vote.

Personally I think the two party system causes too big of a divide in the people and they both seem to lean too far in one direction.

At this point it’s pretty clear that a 3rd Party has no chance to win for the foreseeable future but if people who believe in a 3rd Party continue to vote Democrat or Republican they will never grow big enough to become a real threat.

If you believe in a 3rd Party or even believe that the the two party system is failing us then isn’t it hypocritical to vote Democrat or Republican? And don’t you think it’s your duty to vote how you actually feel?

I ask this as someone who hasn’t voted in almost 20 years but is starting to feel guilty. I won’t vote Republican or Democrat anymore so you can see my vote as wasted either way but no 3rd Party will have a chance to grow if I continue to sit on the sidelines. I should point out that I support whoever the president is because I want the country to succeed but I don’t vote for them.

I can appreciate the desire to not vote D or R because of their lies and hypocrisies, but I think you should vote for who you believe to be the best candidate who represents your values. And don’t go by their fancy words on the stump. Evaluate their rhetoric and actions over time. Do you think war is bad? Is candidate A saying he/she also thinks war is bad? Has candidate A also voted for going to war every time he/she could? OR, has candidate B said the same things, but has a long history of voting against war every chance he/she could? I look at how their actions coincide with their rhetoric and ignore the letter next to their name.

Also, Sanders is only running as a Democrat because our very process is corrupt. He’s actually an independent.

 

[SRN]

Voting based on your personal beliefs is always valid and important but it won't make an immediate impact. It's like voting Republican in California like someone already said itt. There has to be a foundation to work on first! For example right now there are no libertarians in Congress. Zero. They only have ONE seat in the entire USA and that's a lower state chamber That's fucking terrible!

From wiki
While it is currently the third largest political party in the United States by voter registration, it currently has no members in Congress, or governorships, and over the past decade, has had less than 10 members elected to state legislatures or other state office.

 

[all caps]

All the Scumbags are really electable though

Voting for the lesser of 2 evils every 4 years obviously can only lead to somewhere positive. It's like climate science, its settled.

 

[Jorge Luis Borges]

Third parties are almost always more extreme than either of the parties that are trying to cater to large bases. That's usually the point. If you're an ideological extremist or a a single-issue voter on a topic that most people don't care about, the very large differences between the two parties seem smaller to you.

The problem is that relative to voting for the potentially winning candidate that you prefer, voting third party helps get the option you don't want.

Well put.

 

[Jorge Luis Borges]

If voting for a third party makes you feel good, then it's good enough for me. /Janis Joplin

 

[jx820]

No, in fact it's probably less wasteful than a major party vote. 3rd party and write ins communicate the demand for different kinds of policy to major parties. Party line votes communicate that you will eat whatever bowl of shit they place in front of you. People who voted for Hillary wasted their votes. More than half of all US voters in 2016 have nothing to show for their votes but a president they didn't want. People that wrote in Bernie at least told the Democrats what was coming in 2020.

Chances are if you live in a red state, it's going red no matter how you vote, but if 10,000 people write in the libertarian candidate, it still goes republican, but the republican party has to consider the libertarian leanings of their state. If you just go with the GOP vote, the political reality is they can fearlessly shrug off your liberties because you don't care about them. Same with liberals. You live in California your blue vote is wasted. That' state is going blue no matter what. Or you can use your vote to say "I have libertairan/social democrat/Green policy leanings" and the democrats should look at adopting them.

 

[Deleted member 499399]

The only wasted vote is the people who stay home. More US citizens of voting age didn't vote in 2016 than voted for Trump or Clinton. If all of those people voted for a third party candidate they would have won the popular vote (whatever that's worth).
Also mathematically and logically speaking whomever you vote for it will have been a waste of your time because no election is ever won by 1 vote. That's not why we do it though. Just get our there and do your part to support democracy by voting for the candidate you think is best and understand that it might not seem to make a difference but together we can move mountains or something like that.

 

[MMAisGod]

Because the major parties have pitches that are built around the preferences of the public.

An independent doesn't? What if an independent had the literal exact preferences by percentage of the entire American public? Even if they did, hypothetically, they would still have a zero percent chance to win. What if Jack V Savage was a political candidate running independent, and had the ideal positions of the public's best interests. You would lose as an independent, barely even getting any votes, most people having no idea who you are. That reality in itself is a bigger issue than selecting a preferred Democrat or Republican.

Again, there's only going to be one winner. So it has to be someone who has very broad appeal, which will necessarily mean someone who disappoints most individual voters. That's how democracy works, and it's by design. There are significant differences between the practice of selecting presidents and the intention (the plan was no parties at all, people vote for unpledged electors who make their own decisions that would likely not lead to a majority but would give the House a short list that they'd vote for), but that aspect was built in. We want to frustrate the ambitions of extremists. And a third-party candidate who truly was viable--that is, who had the necessary experience and a popular agenda--would get a lot of attention even without being rich (plus, of course, a popular candidate would draw a lot of money).

Somewhat true, but why does someone having broad appeal have to equal appeal within one of two parties? I'm not questioning what it takes to win, I'm questioning the reasoning behind the current structure of winning. I don't relate any candidate outside of the two party system an extremist, because if they had that "popular agenda" you just mentioned they'd still get obliterated by Trump or a Dem. It has much less to do with their policy positions, and much more to do with that lack of positional power. That seems less democratic than an independent having a fighting chance at heavyweight politics.

 

[GhostZ06]

Not a War Room regular obviously. I’m just curious why people think a 3rd Party vote is a wasted vote.

Personally I think the two party system causes too big of a divide in the people and they both seem to lean too far in one direction.

At this point it’s pretty clear that a 3rd Party has no chance to win for the foreseeable future but if people who believe in a 3rd Party continue to vote Democrat or Republican they will never grow big enough to become a real threat.

If you believe in a 3rd Party or even believe that the the two party system is failing us then isn’t it hypocritical to vote Democrat or Republican? And don’t you think it’s your duty to vote how you actually feel?

I ask this as someone who hasn’t voted in almost 20 years but is starting to feel guilty. I won’t vote Republican or Democrat anymore so you can see my vote as wasted either way but no 3rd Party will have a chance to grow if I continue to sit on the sidelines. I should point out that I support whoever the president is because I want the country to succeed but I don’t vote for them.

yes because people are to stupid to actually vote for it

 

[TeTe]

I voted for Gary Johnson in the past two Presidential elections knowing that he wasn't going to win.

It was either that or I wasn't going to vote at all. But I agree with some others, if you really want to things to change, voting for third parties on a more grassroots level is key, which is really where my motivation to vote is in the first place. Changing this stuff on a local level.

I do believe though, that if enough people start voting for third party candidates on the Federal level it could help start a movement and at least push the two main parties into thinking about diversification more. Gary Johnson received 1 million votes in 2012... 3 million in 2016. Both records at the time. If that number keeps rising for any third party it may cause a change in strategy for Dems or Republicans.

This is why I tend to like parliamentary system politics more.. the representation is more based off of actual votes. Three, four or five parties with a percentage of reps based off of voter choice.

 

[TeTe]

An independent doesn't? What if an independent had the literal exact preferences by percentage of the entire American public? Even if they did, hypothetically, they would still have a zero percent chance to win. What if Jack V Savage was a political candidate running independent, and had the ideal positions of the public's best interests. You would lose as an independent, barely even getting any votes, most people having no idea who you are. That reality in itself is a bigger issue than selecting a preferred Democrat or Republican.

Honestly, I'd be okay if every politician was an independent and we voted strictly based off their platform and where they stand on the issues. Unfortunately that's asking too much from the average voter. As @Falsedawn succinctly put it... politics should not be a team sport.

 

[jx820]

The problem is that relative to voting for the potentially winning candidate that you prefer, voting third party helps get the option you don't want.

This is a terrible major party talking point. I mean it's a great talking point for them, but it's not an accurate one.

1. It assumes that an election has a major party candidate you want and one you don't want rather than two people you despise (2016), or two of basically the same guy (most years)
2. Unless you live in a razor close purple state your 3rd party vote neither helps nor hurts either party. Dems win California no matter how you vote. GOP wins Oklahoma no matter how you vote.
3. Lastly, it results in ideology creep. In 2016 the "left" ran a hawkish, candidate who's on the record dry humping the banking industry, stumping for the Iraq war, and on video opposing gay marriage and calling young black people "super predators". Because... "lesser of two evils".

 

[gilbert_mma]

This is a big problem with the two party (or two candidate) system that we have. A guy like Bloomberg (with the financial power that he has) could very easily almost guarantee a Trump win by running as a third party candidate. If he slices of a couple of percentage points from the democratic candidate Trump would win. I think that we should implement a system where you vote for a few candidates and rank them in order. If your first choice doesnt make the cut, the other gets forwarded.

 

[Jack V Savage]

An independent doesn't? What if an independent had the literal exact preferences by percentage of the entire American public?

"Independent" isn't a party (well, there is a right-wing extremist party called the "Indepedent Party," but that's not what we're talking about). The Green Party and Libertarian Party both have messages that appeal to tiny niches. A hypothetical independent party that appealed to a big-enough bloc to win would almost certainly have serious overlap with one of the major parties. There's an evolutionary process here.

Even if they did, hypothetically, they would still have a zero percent chance to win. What if Jack V Savage was a political candidate running independent, and had the ideal positions of the public's best interests. You would lose as an independent, barely even getting any votes, most people having no idea who you are. That reality in itself is a bigger issue than selecting a preferred Democrat or Republican.

Your hypotheticals are carrying too much weight. Like, if we imagine a situation where neither party has popular appeal, and that the public is broadly united on a platform that they both oppose (an impossible scenario, in other words), a third party could certainly win.

Somewhat true, but why does someone having broad appeal have to equal appeal within one of two parties? I'm not questioning what it takes to win, I'm questioning the reasoning behind the current structure of winning. I don't relate any candidate outside of the two party system an extremist, because if they had that "popular agenda" you just mentioned they'd still get obliterated by Trump or a Dem. It has much less to do with their policy positions, and much more to do with that lack of positional power. That seems less democratic than an independent having a fighting chance at heavyweight politics.

Yeah, so our disagreement is probably based more on my belief that the parties have evolved messages that appeal to as many voters as possible, and that is a source of their positional power.

 

[shockaholic12]

It’s not a waste at all. Any one who has studied US history knows many, many of the policies we consider vital to our freedoms and success were first brought forth and fought for by 3rd parties. When the other 2 parties saw public support grow for these policies they adapted them to gain votes.

Very shortsighted to just think of it as stealing votes away or not effecting any change.

 

[Jack V Savage]

This is a terrible major party talking point. I mean it's a great talking point for them, but it's not an accurate one.

1. It assumes that an election has a major party candidate you want and one you don't want rather than two people you despise (2016), or two of basically the same guy (most years)
2. Unless you live in a razor close purple state your 3rd party vote neither helps nor hurts either party. Dems win California no matter how you vote. GOP wins Oklahoma no matter how you vote.
3. Lastly, it results in ideology creep. In 2016 the "left" ran a hawkish, candidate who's on the record dry humping the banking industry, stumping for the Iraq war, and on video opposing gay marriage and calling young black people "super predators". Because... "lesser of two evils".

1. It's a fact rather than a talking point. If you're among the very small number of poorly informed voters who are literally indifferent to the outcome, then I suppose voting third party or not voting is rational except for the fact that having a preference for a specific third party would rationally imply a preference for one of the viable candidates.
2. States are not designated "blue," "red," or "purple" by some kind of fiat. A red state is just one in which most voters prefer Republicans. Every vote counts in those states, but because we have a democratic system, if your preferences are in the minority, you will not prevail.
3. There is no ideology creep. The major parties are moving in opposite directions, not the same one. Your characterization of Clinton is simply false combined with some irrelevancy (unless you think that, for example, she'd make opposition to SSM a key factor in her SCOTUS pick).

 

[Xuh]

It's pretty clear to me that democracy 'works' better in Europe with the smaller size of each country meaning there can be many more parties which, all closer to the regular ppl/grassroot on the ground and offering more or less close fits to their views and even if they don't ultimately get voted in (though occasionally they do), they have a much larger effect on policy of whoever is in charge.

America today is just too big for that. Not much of a way for the little guy to get their voice heard and make a change, or have a lasting grassroot movement outside of the two main parties for the foreseeable future, whether it be with 3rd party let alone 4th, 5th etc. USA now isn't really a democracy, but a bureaucracy.

 

[Seano]

For president, yes. You may as well not bother to vote if you go for a third party.