Why minor candidates can decide who wins an election

HostThink about how a person who gets only one percent of the vote can basically hand the keys of the country to the person they disagree with the most. It sounds like a glitch in the math, but it happens because of how our voting system is built. Why is it that the people with no chance of winning are often the ones who actually decide the winner?

GuestIt mostly comes down to a system called plurality voting. In a lot of places, we also call it first past the post. The rule is simple: the person with the most votes wins. That sounds fair until you realize they don't actually need a majority. They don't need more than half the people to want them. They just need one more vote than the next person. In a race with only two people, sure, the winner has to get over fifty percent. But the second a third person enters the race, that number drops. You could've a winner who only got forty percent of the vote because their two opponents split the other sixty percent between them.

HostSo the person most people voted against is the one who ends up in charge? That feels like the system is missing the point of what the voters actually want.

GuestIt's because the system ignores what we call the order of preference. When you go into that booth, you only get to pick one name. The ballot doesn't care who your second choice would be or who you absolutely can't stand. It only looks at your top pick. Because of that, the system misses the full picture of how everyone feels about all the people running.

HostBut adding more choices usually makes things better. If I go to buy a car, I want more than two brands to pick from. Why does having more options in a race make the whole thing messy?

GuestWell, here is the catch. These third party candidates don't usually pull their support evenly from both sides. They almost always pop up on one specific side of the political line. Think about it this way. If a person runs on a platform of protecting every single tree and stream, they're not going to take votes away from a party that wants to cut down forests. They're going to steal votes from the moderate party that at least tries to protect the environment. This is what we call the spoiler effect. The more popular that third candidate becomes, the more they drain support from the big party they most resemble. It creates a weird situation where the better a minor candidate does, the more they help the person who's the furthest from their own goals. They effectively clear a path for their own worst enemy.

HostI see how that works on paper, but I have a hard time believing people actually think that way when they vote. If I love a candidate, I want to vote for them. It feels wrong to say that voting for who I like is somehow a mistake or a trap.

GuestIt feels like a betrayal of your own beliefs, right? But this leads to something political scientists call Duverger’s Law. It's the idea that this kind of voting system will always, naturally, slide into a two party system. It happens because of the pressure on the person holding the pen. When you're standing there, you have to choose between the candidate you love, who has no shot at winning, and a candidate you can live with, who has a high chance. Most people end up doing what we call strategic voting. They walk away from their favorite choice so they don't waste their vote on a spoiler. It's a cycle that keeps third parties small because the system is basically built to punish anyone who tries to support them.

HostSo the system forces us to play it safe instead of being honest? That seems like it would eventually lead to a lot of frustration, especially if a race is really tight.

GuestIt absolutely does, and we saw this play out in a massive way in the year 2000. In the race for president, it all came down to Florida. George W. Bush won the state and the whole country by only about five hundred votes. That's a tiny number. But in that same state, a third candidate named Ralph Nader got nearly one hundred thousand votes. Now, most of the people who voted for Nader were on the left. If he hadn't been on the ballot, the math suggests those voters would've picked Al Gore over Bush. Nader argued he was giving people a real choice, but because of the way the system works, his presence shifted the win to the person who was the total opposite of what he stood for.

HostIt's like a tiny weight that can tip a giant scale if it sits in just the right spot.

GuestThat's exactly what we call the lever effect. A very small group of voters can end up having total control over the result because they act as a swing weight between two giants. In a close race, the person with the least support often has the most power to decide who actually gets to lead.

HostThe keys to the whole country end up being held by the one percent who decided to walk a different path.

GuestIt means that in our current system, the most important person in the room is often the one who can't actually win the race.

HostThe person with the least chance to lead ends up being the one who picks the leader.