By Eshan Singh, Co-Copy Editor
Republican Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election by securing 295 electoral votes as of two days after the election, beating Democrat Kamala Harris. As of Nov. 7, Independents Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West, Green Party candidate Jill Stein, Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver, and Party for Socialism and Liberation candidate Claudia De la Cruz earned a grand total of zero electoral votes.
Third-party and independent candidates are those that do not represent the Democratic or Republican Parties, the two major parties in the United States. Because these candidates have no real chance of winning the election, Americans should not vote for them, even if they prefer a third-party or independent candidate over the Democratic and Republican nominees.
One reason why it’s so difficult for third-party and independent candidates to win elections is the lack of ranked-choice voting, which is a system where voters can rank candidates by preference. Under the current voting system, voters can only express support for one candidate, so they usually vote for the major-party candidate because that candidate is more mainstream. According to the Federal Election Commission, in the 21st century aside from the 2024 election, the average national vote percentage that went to all third-party and independent candidates is only 2.58%, and the highest individual vote percentage was just 3.28%.
The Electoral College further hurts third-party and independent candidates’ ability to win elections. Usually, all of a state’s electoral votes go to the winner of the state, and since third-party and independent candidates consistently receive fewer votes, they seldom get any electoral votes at all; in fact, the last time someone other than a Democrat or Republican won a state was in 1968. Even if a third-party or independent candidate were to win some states, it’d be practically impossible for them to earn enough electoral votes to win the presidency.
In this regard, voting for a third-party or independent candidate is essentially the same as not voting at all, which is why Americans should vote for either the Democratic or Republican nominee. If you don’t like either nominee, you should vote for whomever you dislike the least. Some people who vote for third-party and independent candidates believe that it is morally wrong to vote for a candidate that they think would be a poor president. However, voting for someone doesn’t necessarily mean you support them; it just means that you think they’re the best option, and because it is virtually impossible for third-party and independent candidates to win, you cannot consider them actual options.
Voting for a third-party or independent candidate can hurt a major party candidate, a phenomenon called the spoiler effect. In 2016, if everyone in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan who voted for Green Party candidate Jill Stein instead voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton, the more ideologically similar to Stein out of the two major candidates, then Clinton would have won the election, which would have been a more favorable result for Stein voters.
So, to all those who voted for a third-party or independent candidate: Hopefully, in the next presidential election, you’ll fill out your ballot for either a Democrat or a Republican. Third-party and independent candidates’ chances of winning will go from zero to zero.
Eshan Singh can be reached at [email protected].
