I say yes, voting third party is a vote for Trump. I live in a red section of a red state. The Repulicans I know have two prime directives;
A. Vote for the person with an “R” behind their name.
B. Stiggenit.
I think the way to defeat Trump is for everyone that sees him for what he is to vote Hillary, bad as she may be. Voting third party is voting for Trump.
Convince me I’m wrong.
Yea. I agree.
In general I’d say that a vote for the Libertarian party usually takes a vote away from a Republican and a vote for the Green party usually takes a vote away from a Democrat.
Only voting for Trump is voting for Trump. Voting for somebody other than Trump or not voting isn’t voting for Trump.
It obviously depends on which particular third party one is talking about, but the most important thing IMHO is that this election cycle, it’s so damned crucial to avoid the insane menace that Trump represents that third parties should be abandoned to guarantee a Hillary victory. What the hell is the point in voting for Johnson or Stein out of some misguided principle if it leaves the door open for a demented dangerous demagogue to become president?
I would say most Libertarian and Green party votes mostly take away from the “did not vote” numbers.
I think there’s a very, very important distinction to be made here. In general, I think more conservatives are likely to vote for a third party rather than Trump. To that extent, convincing conservatives to vote for a third party will help Clinton. That’s the general rule of thumb.
However, general rules of thumb are not a basis for good advice to any one person. To the extent that, say, supporters of Sanders want to cast a protest vote, that hurts Clinton. Therefore, the more people who cast protest votes nationwide, the results of the overall vote get less predictable.
There is great danger in trying to game one’s vote as though YOU think you know how others will vote, so YOU get a free pass to do something potentially reckless. The stakes here are whether people in large numbers are going to join together for a bandwagoning effect to vote for the only credible candidate who will defeat Trump, or if they will believe that all non-Trump votes are equally valuable.
Obviously, they are not.
It’s ridiculous. The math doesn’t even add up. At most, you could say a third party vote is half a vote for Trump.
And I saw someone say in a Facebook comment the other day that a third party vote is a vote for Hillary.
I agree, River Hippie. As long as a third candidate does not really have a chance to win, then an election is between This and That. And any vote not specifically for This is essentially a vote for That. Or more specifically put, it lowers the threshold necessary for That to win.
No. Both the green party and the libertarian party will bleed voters from both parties. If anything the libertarians will likely do better than the greens. I doubt Stein does better than 1-2% of the vote. Johnson will likely surpass that.
Also most states are not swing states. So it really doesn’t matter. Even. Of the swing states that are swing states, it is really only Ohio or Florida that will truly determine the outcome of a close election.
Basically as long as you do not live in Ohio or Florida it doesn’t matter much.
Isn’t voting for a third party voting for Clinton?
In theory, Trump should have had the advantage. He should’ve been able to hold onto the knee-jerk Republicans. The pro-lifers have nowhere else to go. The Ross Perot voters are likely to see him as really an independent outsider.
And yet, he can’t old on to the GOP. The Republicans see him as an outsider, and are defecting. His polling is terrible.
Unless Republicans show up to vote for Trump, somebody who’s not Trump can be expected to win. Like Hillary Clinton!
The way I see it, I am not only voting against both Trump and Clinton by voting third party, I’m voting for both Trump and Clinton by voting third party. 
Yup.
In the words of the Philosopher Cleaver: if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
While voting for Clinton is best, it depends on which way you are leaning. Much better for a traditional Republican to vote 3rd party or not vote at all (which is good for the down ticket) than to vote for Trump.
As a reductio ad absurdum, if every rational Republican voted 3rd party or not at all, Trump would lose big.
A vote for a third party rather than Trump is NOT a vote for Trump.
Consider a contrived example. In this fictional place, there are one hundred likely voters, and in the last election, the (R) received 54 of them and the (D) got 46. If Clinton still receives 46, but ten people vote third-party instead of Trump, Clinton wins (46-44-10). A vote for a third party reduces the chance that Trump will win.
If the people voting third party (or not voting at all) would in a “regular” year be reliable Republican votes, then voting third party is the very opposite of voting for Trump. If the people voting third party would ordinarily be expected to vote Democratic, then yes, voting third party helps Trump.
Just two words: Ralph Nader.
There is no solid proof – but there is certainly evidence – that had it not been for Nader’s well-intentioned run and well-meaning supporters, the history of the first decade of 21st century America would have been drastically different, and dramatically more positive in almost every imaginable way.
You don’t have to like it, but that’s the way American politics is structured: in the presidential election, a vote for a third party is the same as staying home and is essentially an abrogation of a solemn civic responsibility that extends far beyond the US itself.
I would say it was only a vote for Trump IF Trump won. Otherwise, the vote was just a waste of ink.
Voting has straightforward mathematical consequences, which have nothing to do with your intentions as a voter.
If you have a choice between Trump, Johnson, and Clinton, and you decide to vote for Johnson, you’re not helping Trump, but you’re not helping Clinton defeat Trump either. In essence, voting third party is no different than staying home and not voting at all. If you really and truly believe that Trump is a clear and present danger to the prosperity and safety of this country, then you have to vote for Hillary Clinton because she is the candidate who clearly has the best chance to defeat Trump. There is no realistic path for anyone else.
Of course if you believe that Donald Trump is merely a bad candidate and not a delusional, narcissistic, race-baiting, pathological liar who would delegate the job of running the country to religious zealots and vulture capitalists, then voting third party is a viable option. Or you’d vote for a third party if you somehow really and truly believe that Hillary Clinton’s judgment is truly horrible and that she’s the most corrupt candidate we’ve had since Richard Nixon, then it might make sense to vote third party.
Voting behavior will ultimate reveal the level of threat a voter senses from Donald Trump’s campaign and right wing control of the federal government, in addition to their control of many state governments. I’m guessing a lot of your #neverhillary voters are mostly white people who don’t feel particularly threatened by Trump or republicans, or they somehow believe that there’s really and truly no difference between democrats controlling the federal government and republicans. They might understand differences on some level, but they don’t truly feel palpable anxieties the way Muslims, Hispanics, and other progressives might.
I disagree with the OP.
If a voter is making a choice between voting for Trump and voting for a third party candidate, then voting for the third party candidate hurts Trump’s chances of winning. On the other hand, if a voter is making a choice between voting for Clinton and voting for a third party candidate, then voting for the third party candidate hurts Clinton’s chances of winning. On the gripping hand, there are no third party candidates who are going to win this year’s election; so anything which hurts Trump helps Clinton and anything which hurts Clinton helps Trump.
In my opinion, there are probably going to be more voters defecting to third parties from Trump than from Clinton, so I think the third party vote will help Clinton overall.
Not really. There will be enough voters from both sides going Third Party or joke/gag write-ins to pretty much equal out and Trump never had a hope of winning in the first place if he faced Clinton and her machine.
No, I don’t agree. But then I’m a Republican who will never, ever vote for Trump. And loads of other Republicans tell me that I am effectively voting for Hillary.
In reality, my vote means nothing. Trump is almost surely going to win Texas with or without my one measly vote. If Texas is so close that Trump needs my vote, it means he’s getting clobbered elsewhere.
I will vote for my favorite Republicans (and a few reasonable Dems here and there) in all state and local races. But I’ll be leaving all spaces blank on my Presidential ballot. If there were a decent, conservative third party candidate, I’d vote for him. Alas, there isn’t.