Plurality Problems

2024 could be another election plagued by the spoiler effect.

As more candidates pour into the 2024 Presidential race, it is worth discussing an important aspect of American politics once again.

A third party candidate can not win the Presidency, but they can change the outcome of the election.

It is an unfortunate truth, but a truth nonetheless. 

I understand the allure of a third party candidate. A way to vote against the establishment, to make a statement about the need for change. I believe that our nation would be better served with more independents serving in government and with more political parties to choose from. However, the election system is set up to make this difficult, and intentionally so.

The one thing both political parties can agree on is that any other parties are a threat. More parties means voters are split further and therefore less of the government is within the Republican and Democrat hands. Get a strong enough third party or enough new parties and America could reach a position where it becomes unlikely for either Democrats or Republicans to hold a majority in the House or Senate. 

That is a situation both parties desperately want to avoid. But it is a situation that American voters should demand. If no party can hold a majority, then all parties must work together and compromise to pass legislation. More voices in America will be represented in new laws and regulations. 

Only 20% of Americans think Congress is doing a good job. An abysmal failing grade. Politics has become so much about identity and culture wars that animosity and hatred are on the rise. The following graph shows how common these negative sentiments have become. Other polls show that Americans are far less likely to date across the political aisle, or even have friends from the other party.

Once American politics became about identity this was inevitable. When there are only two political parties, as one party takes a stance on an issue, the opposing party takes the opposing stance. Coalitions are formed by this collection of issues, and we as voters have more of our identity pulled into our politics. It becomes more personal, more emotional.

This is why people get so excited by third party challengers and independents. More parties means identities overlap, issues are split, politics goes back to finding common ground to make change happen. Politics can return to being more about the issues than identity.

Despite the public desire, little progress has been made on this front. The few independent Senators have been in office a long time and are well known. They also caucus with the Democrats instead of working on their own. And there is not a single independent or third party candidate in the entirety of the House of Representatives. 

It is a major uphill battle for any non-major party candidate to get elected to any level of government, but when it comes to the Presidency, the only thing a third party candidate can add to the mix is the spoiler effect.

The spoiler effect is non-partisan and is due to our plurality voting method. The concept is straightforward but the impact is best explained with an example.

Clinton v Trump 2016

For this example, let us temporarily ignore all of the controversies around this election, and the candidates, and simply look at the results.

Trump took 304 electoral college votes for the win. Hillary received 227. At first glance this does look like a very commanding victory with a margin of 77 votes. Let’s look at some states.

Wisconsin - 10 electoral votes

• Trump - 1,409,467

• Clinton - 1,382,210

• Other - 152,943

Michigan - 16 electoral votes

• Trump - 2,279,805

• Clinton - 2,268,193

• Other - 242,919

Pennsylvania - 20 Electoral votes

• Trump - 2,912,941

• Clinton - 2,844,705

• Other - 212,461

Arizona - 11 Electoral votes

• Trump - 1,021,154

• Clinton - 936,250

• Other - 105,406

Florida - 29 electoral votes

• Trump - 4,605,515

• Clinton - 4,485,745

• Other - 297,490

For this race, it is expected that the majority of the votes that went to the third party candidates would have gone to Hillary Clinton if those other candidates weren’t in the race. This is because of the overlapping positions and ideologies of the candidates.

In all of the states above, the margin of difference was close enough that in this theoretical version of the election, Clinton could have won. To be clear, this is all a hypothetical and it could never be conclusively proven that if the third party candidates had not run then Hillary Clinton would have been President.

Hillary Clinton would have needed 43 additional electoral college votes to get to 270. The states listed above represent a total of 86. As few as two of those states, Florida and Pennsylvania, were needed to win. 

In 2020, Trump lost Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan but held onto Florida.

It may not be able to be proven, but it was definitely possible that Hillary could have become President.

This is the spoiler effect. Minority views can be voted into office if the majority views are split across multiple candidates.

A simpler abstract example is if you have a district that is 55% Republican and 45% Democrat, but you have 2 Republicans on the ballot and 1 Democrat, the Democrat is much more likely to win since 55% of the voters are now split across two competitors.

This is a problem inherent to plurality voting when there are more than two candidates, and the effect gets worse the greater the number of candidates that there are.

Plurality voting simply means the greatest number of votes wins. So if you had 10 candidates and the vote was split relatively evenly across the group, then the winner may only represent the interests of 11% of the district, state, or country.

Some states have attempted to solve this issue, but in a cumbersome way, with runoffs. A runoff system is where when no single candidate gets over 50% of the vote, then the 2 candidates with the highest vote totals go on to another election.

Runoffs still have issues, the biggest of which is that it doesn’t always solve the problem, particularly with large candidate pools.

To go back to the earlier abstract example, if you had 2 Democrat candidates and 8 Republican candidates, then the two highest vote counts might be both Democrats. Meaning that a runoff would ensure over 50% of the population does not approve of their representation.

The other key issue is that runoffs typically have low voter turnout because people already voted in a primary, and then in a main election and are now asked to return again. In addition to the added burden of another election, some voters may decide they don’t care anymore because their preferred candidate didn’t make it to the runoff.

There is a simple solution that works far better and can even remove primary elections all together. One vote, one time, and the best candidate takes the office.

Ranked Choice Voting

Ranked Choice Voting is exactly what it sounds like. You get a list of the candidates and you rank them in order of your preference. You do not need to rank all candidates.

The way the voting system works is that the 1st choice votes are tallied up. If any candidate has over 50% of the vote, then they win. If not, then the lowest ranked candidate is eliminated and all of their votes are applied to the voters’ second choices. 

This process repeats until a candidate has over 50% of the vote, which ensures that the most preferred candidate wins. There is no form of spoiler effect and you don’t need a primary because all of the Democrat and Republican candidates can be on the main ballot.

If it is such a great system, why don’t we hear politicians talking about it more often? Because it is a great system for the voter. The voter gets more choices without any negative result from showing support for those choices. Third parties and independents now have real chances to win seats.

Ranked Choice Voting takes power away from the political parties and puts it back into the hands of the voter.

Only Maine and Alaska use Ranked Choice Voting for federal elections. More states are considering the measure. Until America gets ranked choice voting in enough states, be mindful of how you vote in important presidential elections.

2024

Cornel West has now announced a third party bid for the 2024 Presidential election. Robert F. Kennedy could shift to running as an independent when he is quickly rejected from the Democrat ticket. Despite the Democrat label currently, if RFK ran as an independent he would likely pull votes away from the Republican candidate whereas West would take Democrat votes.

An argument that is made every Presidential election is that if over 5% of America votes for a third party, they get public funding in the next federal election. That hasn’t happened since Ross Perot, and as you can see, no other parties have gained lasting prominence.

In the end it is your ballot, your vote. Vote in the way that best supports your interests and your wants for the nation. One consideration should be that if you vote for a third party candidate you will not be choosing America’s next president, but you just might be deciding who isn’t America’s next President.

If you wish the system worked better, push for Ranked Choice Voting to be on the ballot in your state. Doing so will ensure that a nation by the people for the people is keeping the power of the vote in the people’s hands.