But realistically, it really doesn’t matter in more than 3/4 of the country, due to how the Electoral College works. If your preferred candidate lost by more than all third party votes combined, there’s zero way your vote could’ve changed anything.
And that’s the situation I live in. My state (Utah) almost always gives 65%+ of the vote to the R candidate. In 2016, Trump won w/ only 45% of the vote, but that’s because the other 20% or so went to Evan McMullin (Hilary got ~27% of the vote). I even tried voting Biden in 2020 because I figured people hated Trump enough (he got dead last in the primary here in 2016, below candidates that had already withdrawn), and I guess I helped because Trump only got 58% of the vote to Biden’s 38%. Excluding McMullin (basically a conservative), third parties got 5.5% in 2016 and 4.2% in 2020. I’d be very surprised if Trump gets less than 60% of the vote this election.
It really doesn’t matter who I vote for, so I make my vote count by voting third party. If they get enough votes, people will take them more seriously and politicians might take some of their policy positions.
But realistically, it really doesn’t matter in more than 3/4 of the country, due to how the Electoral College works. If your preferred candidate lost by more than all third party votes combined, there’s zero way your vote could’ve changed anything.
And that’s the situation I live in. My state (Utah) almost always gives 65%+ of the vote to the R candidate. In 2016, Trump won w/ only 45% of the vote, but that’s because the other 20% or so went to Evan McMullin (Hilary got ~27% of the vote). I even tried voting Biden in 2020 because I figured people hated Trump enough (he got dead last in the primary here in 2016, below candidates that had already withdrawn), and I guess I helped because Trump only got 58% of the vote to Biden’s 38%. Excluding McMullin (basically a conservative), third parties got 5.5% in 2016 and 4.2% in 2020. I’d be very surprised if Trump gets less than 60% of the vote this election.
It really doesn’t matter who I vote for, so I make my vote count by voting third party. If they get enough votes, people will take them more seriously and politicians might take some of their policy positions.