Many Americans believe that you should only vote for someone who has a legitimate chance of winning, implying a presidential vote for a third-party candidate is effectively wasted. However, votes for minor party candidates point to concerns with major campaign strategies and can’t be entirely disregarded.
Are third-party candidates going to take presidential office in 2024? No, of course not. Polling amongst American states has shown a tight race between major Democrat and Republican nominees.
There are situations where I definitely agree that voting for third-party candidates can be meaningless. During the 2024 presidential election, votes for Green Party candidate Jill Stein will literally not be counted by the state of Ohio.
Regardless, it’s been shown our country feels unrepresented and frustrated by the two-party system. The majority of Americans want to replace the electoral college in favor of a popular vote, but changing this process is complicated.
Until the constitution is amended, third-party candidates offer the most reasonable solution to the two-party system.
The most obvious support of third-party votes is democracy itself. To accept that any votes are insignificant means that there is nothing a citizen can do to influence election outcomes, a belief held by many Americans who don’t vote. Alongside people not liking candidates, many doubt their votes actually matter.
In North Carolina, this is definitely not the case. Our battleground state historically holds a Republican legislative branch, Democratic governor and close presidential races.
I obviously see logic behind voting for realistic candidates, as even a “lesser of two evils” vote can impact who takes office. The spoiler effect is seen when candidates take support away from another candidate with a similar platform. This is the reason primaries are held as competing for voter support makes it difficult to gain a majority.
Theoretically, whichever major party candidate has policies that align closest with a third-party platform are facing additional competition. There are concerns that Stein votes are the reason Donald Trump won the 2016 presidency.
The spoiler effect is real, but I disagree with its impact for most third-party votes. The belief that third-party platforms are aligned with major party candidates inherently assumes voters would have voted bipartisan otherwise. This delegitimizes the concept of independent votes in general.
If any third-party alignments truly overlapped with Democratic or Republican views, these third parties and their supporters would have matriculated into the major parties a long time ago. This is evident in potential nominees like Andrew Yang and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. backing major party candidates instead of running independently in the 2024 election.
However, this is not the case for the three largest independent parties. The Green Party was established in 1984 and the Libertarian Party in 1971. The conservative Constitution Party was also established over 30 years ago. For decades, each party has worked to develop their own policies and platforms and are on enough ballots to sway the presidential election.
If the major party candidates truly wanted to gain majority votes, they’d take stronger stances on the issues which matter to third-party voters. Unfortunately, this could risk their own supporters as well.
Third-party platforms can straddle major political stances. Libertarian platforms hold liberal stances on abortion and LGBTQ+ rights and conservative ones on gun possession. If a voter feels strongly about both issues, it is unlikely they would vote for a major party instead.
Bipartisan platforms hesitate to take clear positions on climate change, including the backtracking of strong stances. This could turn off a single-issue voter prioritizing the environment against anyone other than a Green Party candidate. If a conservative voter chooses to cast their ballot for the Constitution Party instead of the Republican Party, which overlap in many ways, that’s still an intentional choice supporting neither major-party candidate.
The importance of informed and principled votes comes first.
Minor party candidates need to reach 5% of the popular vote to be eligible for public funding, which hasn’t been accomplished since 1992. If people are inspired by the platforms of someone who doesn’t have even a fraction of the campaign as bipartisan candidates, they’ve likely done research into policies and plans before making this decision.
2020 saw less than two-thirds of eligible voters cast their ballot and this was the highest turnout since 1900. If a third-party candidate encouraged any voters to hit the polls, they directly increased civic engagement. Local offices listed on the ballot are arguably more impactful on individual’s day to day experiences.
Whichever party you choose, the fact that people are voting is more important than whether or not it’s for a third party.
