If you’re someone voting third party, you’ve probably been told your vote will be a “waste”. And though that should not deter anyone from voting for whom they want to vote for, that statement does hold some truth.
The Presidential Election in Florida of 2000, between George W. Bush, Al Gore, and third party candidate, Ralph Nader, testifies to the power a third party has in swinging a vote. Many may remember the recount in Florida, where Bush skimmed a win by 537 votes, but how did Bush win by such little margin was not known by most. It was found that Ralph Nader, member of the Green Party and third party contender, accumulated a sizeable enough chunk of the voting population to seize voters away from Gore. Research showed that in a two-candidate race between Nader and Gore, Gore would have won. We can conclude then that if Nader hadn’t taken in votes from the left, giving Gore the left votes, Gore may easily have won that swing state and possibly the election.
Now this conclusion is not of opinion but mathematics. It rests on the foundations of our electoral system. What we use in the United States, at least for Presidential Elections, is a system called “plurality”. If you remember this from Math 101, a plurality is a “winner-take-all” system where a candidate does not necessarily need a majority of the votes to win, just the most number of votes. In this system one person wins everything and the losing party walks away with nothing.
Why should this make you rethink voting third party though? Imagine an ideological line. You have the left side, a middle line, and then a right side.
On each side of the scale there’s one major party. We can assume that 50% of the population is with one party and 50% with the other. In a head to head vote, either side could win. But say a third part is introduced on the left. They’re much farther left leaning than the major party, and because of that end up taking the further leaning left voters. What this does is fractionalize the left, leaving the right with their original 50% of the population. Because of plurality, if there was a vote between these 3 parties, simply due to ideological numbers on the right, the right party would win. This is exactly what happened in 2000, when Nader took votes from the Democratic candidate, Gore. As well, in any election this could happen where there is strong support for a third party.
Though this fact my make some sad or frustrated, most voters already know when they go to the polls that their vote is a strategic one. We may want to vote third party because they align ideologically better with ourselves, but handing the election to the party we align the least with is not an option as well. This election is no different. Third party candidates seem more and more appealing to young voters disappointed by the major party candidates. But again, voting for a third party could sack the election for the party you may not like the most, but hate the least, giving the election (and the White House, and nuclear codes…) to a candidate you highly disagree with.
All in all, just think about what it means to vote third party, and make the most educated decision at the ballot. If you’re interested in learning how other types of voting system have succeeded in the United States, check out www.fairvote.org. On the site, you’ll be introduced to how Ranked Choice Voting has given voters more options at the polls and allowed third parties to have greater engagement.
Have fun voting!
