Third-Party Threat
by Victor Thuronyi, HLS ’80
Throughout our nation's history, our political landscape has been organized around two dominant parties, but that has not prevented third-party candidates from gaining traction in several presidential election cycles. Third-party presidential candidates, often seen as "compromise candidates" or "candidates of principle," are almost inevitably spoilers, often handing the presidency (and its coattails) to the candidate least aligned with the third-party candidate's position. In 2000, Al Gore would most likely have won the election had Ralph Nader not run on the Green Party ticket. In 2016, Jill Stein’s Green Party candidacy contributed to the election of Donald Trump.
For the 2024 election cycle, third-party candidates are once again vying for attention. Many voters are drawn to them as a protest vote against the likely major party nominees. In addition to Cornell West’s candidacy on the Green Party ticket (which would almost certainly siphon off Biden voters), a new group supported by former Utah Republican Governor Jon Huntsman and Democratic Senator Joe Manchin has launched a third-party effort called “No Labels.” This group is working across the country to get state ballot access for a potential third-party presidential run next year. No Labels has insisted that they will run a candidate only if that candidate has a clear path to becoming president, and most political analysts see no such path. Nevertheless, the possibility of a No Labels candidacy is sparking widespread concern from Democrats and anti-Trump conservatives that there is a very real risk, given how close the results in the swing states have been, that such a candidacy would end in Biden’s losing the election.
In the long term, ranked choice voting could reduce or eliminate the spoiler nature of third-party candidates. Voters could use their first choice to express dissatisfaction with the major party nominees, but then offer as their second choice the major party candidate they find less objectionable. Supporting ranked choice voting at all state levels can help promote its more general adoption at the national level.
More immediately, spreading awareness about the threat a third party candidate would pose to Biden’s election is an important task for us. We must make sure that disenchanted voters who are looking at third-party candidates as a viable option understand the likely result of their third party vote. In our current system, presidential elections represent a binary choice, a choice between a Democrat and a Republican. Voting for a particular candidate does not mean that you like everything about that candidate but simply that you prefer that candidate over their major party competition. In the 48 states—all but Maine and Nebraska—which currently assign all their Electoral College votes to the single top candidate, voting for a third-party candidate amounts to abstaining, which makes little sense if you think that it makes a difference who is president. It is hard to believe that anyone but a Rip Van Winkle genuinely feels that it makes no difference whether Joe Biden or a Republican is sworn in as president in January of 2025. The difference between the parties’ vision for the country is huge in many respects, but that is another story.
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