Using non-swing states, we can have 3 parties in 2020 without risking the 2016 election.

A quick review: America does not elect the president in a raw national vote. When we hold elections, we tally each state’s results individually, then declare winners state by state. Then each state votes in the electoral college. The number of votes depends on the population of the state, and they all (with a few exceptions) vote for whoever won the state. Some states vote so predictably one way or the other that parties do not bother to court them at all. A few others switch hands often and wind up determining the whole election.

This election is unusual in that our current candidates are both hated more than any other candidate in the last 10 election cycles. This is both by the record low numbers of people who do like them, and the record high numbers of people who don’t like them. However, one of them has to be president, so we’re stuck with choosing the lesser of two evils. You could campaign for a 3rd party to outright win, but you risk splitting your less-hated party’s support.

The problem is, we all want the upsides of a 3rd party voice in politics. The two existing parties agree on many issues like the drug war, bombing countries we are not at war with, police militarization, welfare reform, not repairing infrastructure, privacy/surveillance, and the prison industrial complex. A 3rd party, even if it was not a serious contender, would put pressure on them to take opposing sides on these issues to compete for the base of the 3rd party. It also encourages the parties to redefine pairings of ideas to attract a new base. We have seen in this election how powerful it is to bring up an unexamined issue such as college debt or immigration. Adding a 3rd party means the counter-proposals need to compete with each other, rather than leaving us with a pair of take-it-or-leave-it bullet lists that are more-or-less inflexible after the primaries.

Interestingly, we don’t need a 3rd party to win the presidency to get these upsides. If a 3rd party wins between 5% and 25% of the presidential election vote, they can receive partial public funding in the next election. If a 3rd party can get 15% of the vote from five polling stations, they can take part in the presidential debates. (A non-government entity runs our presidential debates with complicated rules).

So, how do we put this all together? The upsides of a 3rd party mean we probably want one. The fact that a lot of people don’t like either candidate means we can get a 3rd party into power. The fact that some people’s votes don’t count for much means we can do it without jeopardizing this election. The trick is making sure the 3rd party support comes from these already-decided states.

Even more incredibly, this could honestly happen without resorting to fantasy political math. Gary Johnson is already projected by Five Thirty Eight to win 5.5% of the popular vote this election. That would already get the Libertarian party partial funding for the 2020 election.

I understand that other alternative options are also popular. However, no other alternative candidate scenario is as likely to be effective. I understand that many of you would prefer Jill Stein (though her authoritarian leanings mean I would not). The Green Party would need incredible growth to be able to get 5% this election. That said, an environment where 3rd parties are taken seriously would undoubtedly help them in 2020 as well. That could potentially position them for the for the 2024 election. Write-in candidates and independents are all-or-nothing gambles. They don’t have parties, so none of these incremental attempts to write them into American politics work.

(Added 10/7/16: I am sad to have been quoted for opinions I don’t have, so I will be more clear: I advocate that you vote for Clinton (Democrat), despite her failings, in swing states. I advocate that you vote for Johnson (Libertarian), despite his failings, for non-swing states because it would be great to get an anti-authoritarian party into power and because it is statistically viable. You don’t have to care what I think, but if people are going to quote my opinions I’d like them to at least be opinions I actually have. )

The trick is figuring out what small slices of people are statistically irrelevant enough to the 2016 election that they can focus on getting a 3rd party into the 2020 election. Thankfully, Five Thirty Eight did all the work and so I just have to make you a pretty infographic. Here it is.

States where it is currently safe to vote 3rd party. Data taken from Five Thirty Eight. Snapshotted on November 3rd 2016

So where did this come from?

We’re working with two ideas here. One is what we think will happen (the outcome) and the other is how sure we are that it will happen (the confidence). For example, if the weather anchor says it will not rain tomorrow, you may take that as the expected outcome and plan a picnic. Still, you might not have particularly high confidence that it will actually happen so you might also have a backup venue in case it rains. That’s not good enough for us. We also have to quantify how sure we are about out predictions. That is why we can’t use raw maps of the expected point lead of either candidate.

Five Thirty Eight has released predictions on how each state will vote. These are described as a range of possible outcomes. The range is designed so that Five Thirty Eight can say they think the actual outcome will be inside that range 80% of the time. The map above is produced by selecting the states where all of those outcomes are for a single party. In short, this graph is very conservatively made.

The next question is if this can backfire. You are correct that the opposing party could randomly take even your very well-established state. The problem is, if the other party successfully makes your state close without massive numbers of 3rd party voters, they have probably already taken enough other states that the election was already lost.

The next problem is a massive 3rd party migration that changes the balance of a state. We can solve this by keeping the list of safe states up to date. If your state is removed from this list, consider voting for the 2016 election rather than the 2020 election. In order for the safe states list to backfire, we would need a massive statistically undetected shift to 3rd parties to jeopardize this election with this algorithm, or for people to commit to the safe states project and then stop checking the list.

In short, the electoral college means that only certain states will decide this election. The rest of us are tasked with determining the next one.