Third party candidate says Trump victory would be “horrific”, but Clinton’s policies are “not at all” reassuring.

US Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein has said that her supporters should “absolutely not” vote for Hillary Clinton to stop a Donald Trump presidency, even in a swing state.

In an interview with Mehdi Hasan, host of Al Jazeera’s Upfront, Stein said that Clinton “is not different enough” from the New York real estate businessman, to enable her or the Democratic Party “to save your job, save your life, or save the planet.”

“We have two ways to commit suicide here and I say no thank you to them both.”

US election 2016: Third parties are voiceless

Asked whether her campaign will “by default” lead to a Trump presidency, Stein said she has “no illusions that the Democratic or Republican parties are going to fix” major problems in the country, such as environmental degradation, unemployment and the “outsized influence” of corporations.

Stein is currently polling around 3 or 4 percent. Due to her low numbers, she has been shut out of the presidential debates along with Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson.

Given her low likelihood of winning, Stein was asked who she would prefer to see as president, Clinton or Trump.

“It’s not a matter of not liking them,” she said, declining to choose either candidate. ”It’s that in this election, we’re not just deciding what kind of a future we will have, but whether we will have a future at all.”

Asked how comfortable she would be knowing that a vote for her might help tip the scales in Trump’s favour, she said: “It will be horrific if Trump wins, but I am not at all reassured by the policies of Hillary Clinton.”

Confronted about her visit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which drew the anger of Russian environmentalists, Stein said she made the visit “to criticise Vladimir Putin for his extremely ineffective war policy which I would put together with that of the US”.

She accused the US government of “collaborating with Russia” in the bombing campaign, while urging the two rival powers to work on a weapons embargo “against the funding of terrorist enterprises”.