I won't believe a single poll until this election is over. There is so much incentive for misinformation out there it is unbearable. Just get out and vote.
Nobody hurts 
like
If the democrats lose it will be because their entire campaign is "we are not Trump, also if we lose the election it's Russia's fault"
I'm struggling really hard to see which voter is on the fence between Trump and Stein. Wouldn't it be more likely to be on the fence between Stein and Harris, or Stein and the couch?
I think Trump draws a lot of broad support from his 'anti-establishment' rhetoric so it kinda makes sense for folks to look to other anti-establishment candidates as an alternative to him. There's a tendency to look down upon Trump voters as only right wingers, conspiracists etc and not really understand that a lot of his support is superficial and based on limited information.
In a way it's not so much that Stein or other left candidates are spoilers for the establishment Dems but more the case that figures like Trump are spoilers for progressive alternatives to the establishment.
Not as many people hate Harris specifically as hated Hillary, but a lot of people (for good and bad reasons) hate the Dems and also Kamala to some extent.
People who don't like Trump but are too anti Democrat to vote Harris
One could still be pro Democrat or pro democracy, and still do not like Harris. Many things can be true at the same time.
Jill Stein is providing spite voters an option to not vote for Donald Trump.
Hillary took a lot of friendly fire in 2016 from the Bernie Bros who were not too happy.
It’s a fun thing to tell yourself, but more Sanders voters voted for Clinton in 2016 than Clinton voters voted for Obama in 2008.
Democrats will still blame Stein if they lose, and even though their explicit strategy is to pick off disaffected Republicans, they'll never blame Chase Oliver. It's just like in 2016, when Hillary used the exact same strategy, and they blamed Stein, even though Gary Johnson took home a much higher percentage of the vote in most swing states. They don't care about spoiler candidates; they just want to punch left, especially when they need a scapegoat for a loss.
What's wild to me is that they actually put out attack ads targeting the Green party, which tells me they're believing their own propaganda.
Do you think all of those people who have been saying that third-party voters are going to destroy the US will be apologizing in the comment section here?
First past the post is a terrible design. Let's rank choice and move on.
lol, pie in the sky right?
Without looking at any statistics or polling, I think the spoiler effect is not as prominent and is over stated for one reason.
If I'm going out of my way to not vote for the Democrats or Republicans and voting third party that would mean that I dislike my options so much that I'm giving a fuck you to the two party system.
What people can gather from this is if you said there was only two options I would just sit out and therefore it wasn't going to affect either candidate regardless.
I'm open to be convinced otherwise but I think candidates blaming spoilers should look at the electoral college and themselves when every 4 years they are ready to blame single digit candidates for their losses.
Dem mental gymnastics are going into overdrive rn
