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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

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It is entirely possible that I am too election-brained to understand the logic here at the moment, but I am a bit confused at the premise. If there is a relatively large percentage of third party votes in safe blue (or safe red) states, but a very low percentage of third party votes in swing states, literally nobody who matters will be fooled. It will be plainly obvious that voters who have a strong preference for one party over the other, and who could be relied upon to turn out for their preferred side in the event of a close election, are casting meaningless throwaway votes.

It shows that people who "can be relied upon to turn out" would prefer a third party if they didn't feel like they "had to" vote against whoever they hate, like if their state ever went ranked choice. Without the vote swapping, they hold their nose and their third party signal vanishes. It does nothing for this particular election, but it maybe, just maybe, increases the odds of escaping the two party trap in the future.

We won't escape it. Duverger's law. What third party votes actually do is signal that there's a body of people who have a different set of preferences (with some very vague gesture as to what those might be) whose votes might be worth attempting to appeal to in future elections.