Is voting for a third-party candidate effective, or is it a wasted vote? (And other third party questions) | BU today

Q&ONE

With Bruce J. Schulman and Arjun Vishwanath

BU today: Is there a world where a third-party candidate could ever get the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the presidency?

Bruce Schulman: You can never say never, but it sure seems like no. The most successful third-party candidacy came in 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt came in second and received about 27 percent of the popular vote. Of course, he was a former president of the United States who had not been renominated by his party and formed his own party. More recently, H. Ross Perot’s third-party candidacy in 1992 received 19 percent of the popular vote, the second most in US history—but he received zero electoral votes. With the Electoral College system, it is very, very unlikely that a third party candidate can win an election.

The best way to understand third parties, I think, was said by the famous post-World War II historian Richard Hofstadter. He said third parties are like bees: once they sting, they die. With the more substantial third parties, such as those that gain enough support to qualify for debates, they are often formed by a social movement due to the failure of the two major parties to address a concern or constituency. What almost always happens is that they stick, and then they die because one of the major parties appropriates their message. It is like the role of third parties – they can produce important changes in the political system. But no one in the last century has ever threatened to take power.

BU today: In this election, what are some of the factors that are causing voters to look outside the two-party system?

Arjun Vishwanath: There are a few types of reasons voters might consider third parties. First, they may have ideological belief systems that do not align well with party platforms. For example, someone may have more libertarian views and they would feel that neither the Democratic nor Republican nominees articulate their views. In the same way, they can be more extreme – e.g. socialists – and believe that neither party is good enough. In the 2024 election, this has shown itself most prominently in the debates surrounding Israel and Gaza. Some voters believe that neither Joe Biden nor Kamala Harris have been sufficiently responsive to the plight of the Palestinians, and in doing so are turning to other candidates, such as Stein or West. The second type of voter is someone who is dissatisfied with the broader American political system. They may think that the system is rigged between Wall Street and Washington, the elites are all the same and produce similar results, and so on.

BU today: We know this race will likely be decided by narrow margins in the swing states. How could these third-party candidates end up influencing the outcome of the election?

Schulmann: We don’t quite know yet. In different states, there are different third parties on the ballot – control of the vote is entirely local in the US, which is unlike almost every other modern democracy in the world. So far, it looks like votes for the Green Party will be votes taken from Harris and the Democrats, and votes for the Libertarian Party will be votes taken from Trump and the Republicans. That has certainly been the pattern since 2000.

If you believe the polls for this election, it looks like third-party candidates are actually poised to do less well than in recent elections. Polls put the two largest parties, the Green Party and the Libertarians, at about one percent of the popular vote, while in 2016 they got about four to five percent of the vote. That said, if this election is as close as predicted, (remember) last time, key states were decided by 40,000 to 80,000 votes in some places. This year, it could mean the difference between victory and defeat.

BU today: You often hear it said that because America is, for better or worse, a two-party system, voting for a third-party candidate is “wasting your vote.” Do you agree?

Schulmann: It is very common to think of votes for a third party as wasted votes. Anyone who advocates for one of the two major parties will certainly tell you that. But it all depends on what you think the purpose of voting is: if you think it’s only to decide who will win and take elected office, then voting third party is definitely a waste. If you think that it is a way for citizens to make statements about how they feel about the political system and what opportunities they think they have or would like to have, then you can see it as a statement. Now, these statements can often end up being counterproductive. For example: If you believe that the two major parties are both servants of conservative corporate interests and don’t really stand up for progressive causes, and you vote for the Green Party and because of that Trump becomes president, that will not advance your views. But it is a way of making a statement.

Vishwanath: It depends on the context. Most general elections are not too close, and so the effect of a marginal vote is essentially zero in these cases. To take Massachusetts, for example, there is no way Trump is going to win this state. I think it’s more accurate in these cases to think of one’s vote as expressing one’s preference for who they prefer, since whether someone votes for Stein or Harris has no bearing on the final outcome (here).

It gets a little more difficult in more competitive jurisdictions. The probability of one vote swinging Michigan is infinitesimal — but a block of, say, 10,000 voters deciding they prefer Stein over Harris could be decisive. The concern here is that these Stein voters might prefer Harris to Trump, but by voting for Stein, they would be allowing Trump to win, their least favored outcome. This may or may not be the case – to return to the Israel/Gaza example, if those voters primarily care about that and believe that Trump and Harris are equal on the issue, then they may not mind if Trump wins. But even if they have a preference between the major party candidates, there is another reason why their vote may “count.” The threat—and the follow-through—of third-party voting may cause the major party candidates to change their platforms accordingly. The logic goes that if Harris is worried about losing those voters, she can adopt a more pro-Palestine stance. And if she fails to do so, and those voters cast the deciding votes against her, then future Democratic candidates will reorient their positions to gain those votes.

BU today: Ultimately, what are the pros and cons of voting third-party in a race where you don’t like the traditional candidates?

Vishwanath: The pros and cons are the same as in any other race – if you don’t vote in a decisive election. The advantages are that the voter is likely to cast a vote for a candidate they prefer the most and is able to send a message by doing so. The downside, especially in a close choice, is that they may end up with a worse alternative than the one they prefer. If a pro-life voter unhappy with Trump’s pivot on the issue instead votes for the Constitution Party’s candidate (Randall Terry, an anti-abortion activist) and produces a Harris election in the process, Harris will likely be worse on abortion than Trump from the perspective of the pro-life voter. These are always the trade-offs involved in third-party voting.