Let’s get something out of the way first: No third-party candidate is going to become president of the United States
Eugene Debs and Gary Johnson may not be familiar names to the average voter, but Ross Perot and Teddy Roosevelt should be instantly familiar. All of them waged third-party campaigns for president. What distinguishes such runs is whether they play spoiler to the two major party campaigns. If they don’t, they are considered failures — spoiled, rather than spoiler.
Let’s get something out of the way first: No third-party candidate is going to become president of the United States. The two-party system is too large and well-established for a third party to break through. Is it theoretically possible that a deadlocked Electoral College could result in Congress determining the victor? Yes, but practically speaking, that would take us down a rabbit-hole. It hasn’t happened since the 1824 election of John Quincy Adams. So no, there is no a plausible scenario of a third-party victory.
But the 2024 election offers a great opportunity for a third-party candidate to be a spoiler. Think of the Republican and Democratic parties as the main ingredients in a chocolate cake. A third-party candidate who draws only a small percentage of the vote would be akin to an exotic flavor — for example, a dash of coffee — that hardly gets noticed in the larger result. But if he draws enough votes, it alters the entire cake. Instead of a dash of coffee, now it’s a tablespoon, which turns the recipe into a chocolate mocha cake.
Eugene Debs ran for president on the Socialist Party ticket five times, from 1900 to 1920. It raised the profile of Debs and his party, but he only ever garnered a few percentage points. Gary Johnson, the former Republican governor of New Mexico, ran on the Libertarian ticket in 2016 and also drew a very low percentage of votes. These examples are the norm.
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