#decision 2024

[zanmor]

Using Your Vote Strategically

Your vote doesn’t matter (probably). Luckily you can make it do a bit more.

Your vote is one of a few hundred million game pieces. Knowing how best to use it requires you to understand your place on the game board. Let’s take a look at that board.

Current polling has the following ten states (yellow on the above map) as highly competitive in this year’s presidential election: Maine, New Jersey, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Virginia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Georgia. Realistically those first three have only gone to Democrats since at least 2000 so speculation is more focused on the last seven (and even New Hampshire has been solidly Democrat since it voted for Bush in 2000).

If you’re one of the roughly 37.5 million voters who lives in one of those states, congratulations! Your vote will actually help decide who wins the presidency in November. As such you should probably vote for one of the major parties. To the other 82% of the electorate, it’s time to think a little harder about how you’ll utilize your vote in the fall.

Meanwhile there are 35 states that solidly belong to one of the two parties and that ain’t changing. They’re blue and red on the map above.

These states have only given electoral votes to their respective party since at least 2000 and current polling (according to 270towin.com) shows that they will do that again this year, well beyond any margin of error in the polls. California for instance is currently polling heavily in favor of the Democratic candidate and has voted for a Democratic candidate since 2000. Obviously that’s not about to change. That’s the case with these other 34 states as well. Which means if there’s any way to “throw your vote away” then it’s by blindly tossing it in with the millions of others that will not impact the electoral college or party platforms in any way.

The states where your vote matters least are:

California, Texas, New York, Illinois, Indiana, West Virginia, Alaska, Missouri, Hawaii, Louisiana, Kansas, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Montana, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Idaho, Tennessee, Utah, Arkansas, North Dakota, Wyoming, Mississippi, Alabama, Washington, Massachusetts, Maryland, Oregon, Connecticut, Vermont, Delaware, Washington DC, Rhode Island, and New Mexico.

If you live in one of these states I have no qualms about advising you to vote third party in the general election. It will not change the electoral college outcome. But it can have important benefits you wouldn’t see by simply tossing another ballot on the mountain. I’ll talk below about those benefits. First, the last part of the game board.

The following six states (green on the above map) are technically polling within the margin of error where they could potentially go either way. I personally think it’s unlikely they’ll flip but you can make your own call on that and vote accordingly. If you live in North Carolina, Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, or Colorado, I think you’re likely to get more use from your vote giving it to a third party candidate based on current polling.

As I said above, I don’t expect that third party voting will impact the electoral college outside of those few truly competitive states.

So what does voting third party do?

If enough people vote third party it can do two helpful things: 1. if a party’s candidate receives over 5% of the popular vote then they can get federal matching funds in the next election, helping spread messages currently relegated to the sidelines, and 2. the major parties are more likely to take note of these votes and try to adjust their platforms to grab these voters in later elections. Voting for one of the two major parties doesn’t send any sort of message. What little utility your vote has in that regard is lost.

Voting for a candidate like Jill Stein of the Green Party can accomplish both of the above goals. Her platform is incredibly progressive. Across the board it’s a lot of things that leftists have been clamoring for. It will show establishment Democrats that there is voting support for those policies.

By supporting a third party candidate (not an independent solo candidate) we could see her get 5% of the popular vote and gain federal matching funds in 2028. It’s not about if she would be a good president or if you like her personally—she is not and never will get elected. It’s about hitting that 5% and showing the establishment that if they cater to the folks who like this platform that they can win votes.

Five percent of the 2020 election would have been just under 8 million votes. Four million Californian voters could have voted Green Party and Biden still would have won the state by over a million votes. We can definitely find 4 million votes in the other 40 states that otherwise are unlikely to impact the election. And we should.

[idkmybffjillyy]

voting against trump for the third goddamned time like:

[radiofreeallston]

#true

[thekimspoblog]

There are few people I despise more than the "Never-Trump"-er.

You prioritized a stupid-ass religion. That's right; I said it; Christianity is stupid, and you're stupid for believing in it.

You spent years trying to strip women of their reproductive rights.

Donald Trump sicking his mob on you for being too moderate is precisely what you deserved. He is the only logical conclusion of the policies you support, and I'd honestly respect you more if you could just slap on a viking helmet with the rest of your ilk, you two-faced weasel.

And now you have the balls to get up here and whine about how your party needs to return to the center and to decency?

Every remotely reasonable policy has come from the progressive side. "Tradition" has never been the moral choice.

The Republicans have functionally been a terrorist sect for decades. Last time I checked, I wasn't supposed to negotiate with you.

You don't deserve a platform; you deserve to be kissing my shoes, begging for forgiveness that you didn't jump ship back in the 80's.

Honestly? If there's even a CHANCE of the Dems moving an inch to the right to court your vote, I'd rather you not vote at all.

You are incapable of learning from your failures, and once the orange man is gone, it's going to be right back to business as usual building your theocratic capitalistic patriarchy... just quietly and politely this time.

Go die in a ditch.

[dont-lick-my-foot]

NBC Makes its First Projections of the Night!

NBC News and The Associated Press have called Kentucky for Trump and Vermont for Harris

EC vote share totals: 8 Trump, 3 Harris

[realm-of-tas]

Learn to be mindful with your emotions, don't let ur emotions determine your decisions.

[rickmaynard]

8-9-24: Georgetown News-Graphic cartoon.

[kittentwinkles]

in light of the election:

keep going. it doesn't matter if you run, walk, crawl... You can drag yourself along the ground bleeding, bruised, sobbing and groveling in pain as long as you KEEP GOING. trump's plan for the country will be at a lot of our expenses, so as long as you keep going and stay on your feet and keep getting back up no matter how many times they try to knock you down, you've done what you need to do.

i love each and every one of you, please be safe 💙

[exyrpf]

Okay I'll admit it, I didn't actually expect to see Donald Trump pretend to deep throat a microphone three days before election day and now i wish I could erase that from my brain anyway now you all have to see it too

:)

[blemgoid]

[lonniemachin]

[aunti-christ-ine]

[princesssarcastia]

i have a problem with the theory that by not voting for democrats and letting democrats lose badly enough this november, we can force them to take a good hard look at themselves and swing to the left. well, actually, there are a couple problems, but here's tonight's object lesson:

the problem is the RNC Autopsy.

Republicans got pretty well spanked in the 2012 presidential election, and VERY well spanked in the 2008 presidential election. people decided not to vote for republicans, and let them lose so badly that the republican party took a good hard look at themselves.

The result was a report released in 2013, wiki page linked above. And they did exactly what some people on the left hope democrats will do in the coming years, should they lose in november 2024! They said hey, apparently being racist and hating poor people and only talking to whites isn't getting us anywhere! Why don't we try a different, kinder, more inclusive approach if we want to win elections?

Nice, right? Good proof of concept?

Unfortunately, history didn't stop in 2013.

Unfortunately, we all know how this story ends. It ends with a fascist reality TV star becoming president and encouraging the republican party that actually, its problem is that it wasn't racist and poor-hating enough. Actually, Trump told the republican party, your problem is that you've gone too long without saying the quiet part out loud. No more euphemisms, no more obfuscation, and definitely no movement to the left. Be full-throated in your hatred of immigrants.

And, like it or not, that did win Trump the election. Which convinced the republican party that he was right. They completely abandoned the ideas proposed in the RNC autopsy, and I don't know that they'll ever find their way back to that point.

So, when people say they don't want to support democrats, and they hope that by letting democrats lose the elections they'll move the democratic party to the left...i wouldn't be so sure.

In fact, if that happens, what I predict we'll see is a democratic party prepared to swing to the right. Sure, it'll still have a progressive wing. The Squad will live on. But they'll be increasingly ostracized by a party that will be even more obsessed with courting the forgotten white man, by toning down its inclusivity, by backing off of more expansive social safety nets and wealth taxes.

Like it or not—I certainly find it depressing to consider—Joe Biden is the most left-leaning president we've had in a long, long time. Certainly since Jimmy Carter, and perhaps since even before him. If he loses in November, if his party loses in November, I guarantee their washington insider strategists will find a way to blame it on progressiveness and walk us back at least a decade, if not more.

I'm not happy about any of this. But this is, I believe, the reality we're facing.

[dont-lick-my-foot]

[tribalephemeral]

GoFundMe: Buy 1,000 Postcard Stamps and Defeat Fascism!

[usernamegobrrrrr]

ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

hey guys. I know alot it happening right now, and alot of people are scared. But it will be okay. These next four years will shape our future as a country, and as a people. I know that hearing this stuff from a literal CHILD might not be very comforting, but I will say this: Benjamin Franklin said "We have a democracy, if we can keep it."

So let's keep it.

Dont let these times bring you down. Learn to stand up, and FIGHT. We all fought, so why stop now? Right when we almost had it??? Let's keep fighting. Please. Give me, the rest of my generation, and those that come after... give us a country to be proud of. Give us a country we are PROUD to have grown up in.

Lets do this.