• acargitz@lemmy.ca
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    2 hours ago

    I don’t understand why it is taken for granted that if Stein wasn’t a candidate the people who vote for her would be voting for the Democrats instead. Just as likely they would not vote at all or vote for some other protest candidate.

    • SSJMarx@lemm.ee
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      38 minutes ago

      I saw some stats on this in another thread, most third party voters wouldn’t be voting if their candidate wasn’t on the ballot, and most third party voters benefit Democrats down ballot. The spoiler candidate logic has always been sketchy.

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 minutes ago

        The spoiler candidate logic has always been sketchy.

        it depends on how popular third party is. If they’re getting 20-30% of the vote but no more it’s extremely common for them to drop out to support the primary instead.

        Anything lower than 10% and it probably doesn’t matter much. RFK jr is a decent exmaple of this, although he was more “bipartisan” in terms of support, apparently.