This works because almost all the US uses first-past-the-post elections for the Presidential general election. So you get outcomes like this:


Scenario 1:

Biden: 10 votes

Trump: 9 votes

Kennedy/Stein/West: 0 votes

Biden wins the state


Scenario 2:

Biden: 9 votes

Trump: 9 votes

Kennedy/Stein/West: 1 vote

Tied vote, decided by game of chance/lawsuit


Scenario 3:

Biden: 8 votes

Trump: 9 votes

Kennedy/Stein/West: 2 votes

Trump wins the state


This is why you see huge financial support from Republican billionaires for third party candidates who have no chance of winning.

  • LazyPhilosopher@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Wait, are you telling me the Democrats don’t actually do the things they say they’re going to do and always find some way to f*** it up?? Oh my God I had no idea. Maybe we should vote for actual left-wing people instead of you know Democrats.

    • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
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      8 months ago

      The Democrats are a coalition, and not every part of the coalition is on board with everything proposed by everybody else in the coalition.

      More and better Democrats would be better for sure, but tough. Manchin represents a state which went 68% for Trump; Sinema basically pretended to be left-wing (having even been a Green Party candidate at one point) and flipped once in power.

      • LazyPhilosopher@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Coalition: an alliance for combined action, a temporary alliance of political parties(plural) forming a government or of states.

        So you’re incorrect there.

        By the definition you seem to be implying than every political party is a coalition because there are multiple people in them and people don’t have hive minds… So that’s kind of irrelevant and worthless.

        Moving on, let’s focus on the Sinema thing. Pretending to be left-wing is the thing I’m talking about! Democrat or Republican all of these politicians do what they’re paid to do. When team dumb, looks like they’re finally about to score a point, we’re always going to lose just enough people that we don’t quite have the vote. Because that’s what the people that pay them to do their job tell them to do.

        This idea that we have to back the Democrats because otherwise the Republicans will get in. I get it. Republicans are blatantly fascist instead of secretly fascist . They do horrible s*** and make stuff worse all the time. I hate them too.

        But it’s also what the Democrats want. Have you heard of the pied Piper strategy? If not, I implore you to stop arguing with my asshole self and Google it. If you don’t want to do that, I’ll summarize it briefly for you. The Democrats literally send money to the most far-Right candidates in order to scare people into voting for them. They know about this trap and they want us constantly caught in it so nothing can get better.

        The Democrat and Republican parties are Siamese twins. They are attached at the hip. One cannot survive without the other.

        That’s my best attempt to get through to you dude. I’m not going to respond after this✌️

        • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
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          8 months ago

          You’re using a very narrow definition of coalition — the Democratic party is a coalition of groups within the US.

          Despite what you say, there are very real differences between the parties, and ones which make the Democrats a group where it is possible, at least some of the time, to get good policy. It’s happened before, and it will happen again if we give them the power to act.