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Every voter is entitled to a vote for whoever they want. The idea that every vote for the Greens would instead go to the Democrats if magically the Greens didn'
by icelancer 8y ago
Every voter is entitled to a vote for whoever they want. The idea that every vote for the Greens would instead go to the Democrats if magically the Greens didn't exist is nonsense.
Republicans don't bitch that Libertarians exist. For example, if you take the logical conclusion that if all Green voters voted Democrat and all Libertarian voters voted Republican in the last presidential election, then Trump would have won the popular vote.
Democrats don't get to have it both ways.
- Latteland 8y agoI did not mean to imply that all green party votes are always wasteful, but there are cases where the green party vote lost the election, and if there wasn't a significant libertarian vote taking away republican votes it's clear that the 3rd party vote did cost an election. green party voters are generally thought to be very democratic if they weren't green. i've voted for green party candidates myself, otherwise i'm very likely to vote dem. libertairan voters seem to be more mixed between dem and r but lean r. Here's a washington post article that considers this issue. There are many other articles that looked into it and came to similar results, that green party voting cost hrc. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/green-party-votes-made-the-difference-in-the-presidential-election/2016/12/05/68899908-ba38-11e6-ae79-bec72d34f8c9_story.html?utm_term=.2f7462c90511 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/green-party-votes-ma... Even if you want to quibble with a particular article's analysis, with our system it's clear that in close races not voting for a primary party (d or r) could cost them the election.