No, this is not a prediction about who wins the election.

Oliphantom Menace

No, this is not a prediction about who wins the election. This is a more mechanistic "what to expect" for those who might watch American elections for the first time:

First: It's Up To the States (and Voter Suppression)

There are nationwide voting laws and certain protections in place at a federal level, but when it comes to a lot of voting laws themselves, these vary wildly by state. In Minnesota, there is no 'voter registration deadline' because you can register to vote on the same day as the election. In many other states, however, Republicans (primarily) have pushed voter registration deadlines that end weeks before the election and also unlike Minnesota you have to re-register to vote every election. If you forget to re-register in time, even if you'd really really like to vote, in a lot of these states you literally can't.

This has led to a lot of dirty tricks on the part of Republicans. The primary one involves making voters in a region that votes for Democrats ineligible. Filling out fake 'change of address' forms for voters in that (usually urban) region, or if you're a Republican Secretary of State, maybe you purge everyone with the same last name as a felon from the voter rolls, or maybe you pass laws that reduce the number of polling places in Democratic-voting areas, while increasing them and reducing the wait time in white suburbs.

Some states have other voter-suppression initiatives, like VoterID, shown to disproportionately suppress Democratic votes (a lot of people in cities don't have drivers' licenses, or change addresses too frequently to keep them up to date), or they do "signature checks" where your signature has to match some kind of signature that's on file with the state.

There are a lot of things like this.

So whenever you hear about some arcane provision that requires, I dunno, a ballot envelope to have a proper address on it to be counted, or something like that, it's all in service to reducing the number of eligible votes because in general Republicans have learned, as a minority party, that a lower turnout is always in their favor. High turnout generally always favors Democrats in elections.

Gerrymandering is another form of voter suppression, which mostly affects votes for Representatives in the House of Representatives. Carve out a district that intentionally puts your red state voters in the majority, and carve out the majority black areas into swiss-cheese districts that dilute the vote of black voters in these areas, so the Republican voters can drown them out.

That will come into play this election, too, though not in the Presidential vote.

The Popular Vote Means Literally Nothing

The popular vote exists to piss you off about how bad voting for President actually is. That's the only function I can think of for the popular vote.

People from other countries routinely misunderstand this, it's one why our electoral politics doesn't work like theirs when voting for President.

You can't understand anything about voting for President in the USA until you understand the electoral college.

That is how a President is elected, and that's how a President (like Trump) gets elected, despite losing the popular vote by like 7 million votes in 2016.

The Electoral College

Based on census data, each state gets a certain number of electoral votes. I don't know the exact breakdown, but California (a very populous state) has 54 electoral votes all by itself, Pennsylvania has 19, Minnesota has 10, Texas has 40, and so on.

The important part of this is that a simple majority grants all of the electoral votes in a given state to the winner. (Some outliers like Maine and Nebraska aside).

This means if you run 3 candidates for President in the state and one gets 33% and one gets 34% and another gets 32% (just to simplify the math) the 34% candidate wins all of the electoral votes.

Why the Focus On "Swing States?"

Because we generally know--before anyone has even cast a vote--that the left-leaning voters of California, especially in the biggest cities, are going to vote for the Democratic candidate, because they haven't voted for a Republican candidate for President in decades.

So California is not a swing state, and we can more or less safely chalk up 54 votes for Kamala Harris from California. A surprise there would be unprecedented.

Then we have states in which the outcome shifts from election to election and the electorate is pretty divided, meaning the results can "swing."

So while California is important

Note that any red-hat voters in California wake up to vote knowing that at best they can elect representatives, but their vote will be *completely ignored.

The same for blue-state voters in a deep red state like Kentucky or Alabama. Cast a vote for Harris there, you'll still be drowned out by 2/3 of all voters in the state.

Oliphantom Menace

Why the Hate For Third Parties

Nader.

In 2000, Ralph Nader ran as a third party, and the margin of victory in the state of Florida encompassed Nader's votes, meaning that if Nader had not been in the race, and if those voters who voted for Nader voted for Gore instead, we'd have had President Al Gore.

Now, it's a very big if that Nader voters would have voted at all, much less voted for Al Gore but it's a likely scenario that at least some of them would, and maybe enough to make a difference.

It's why there's real hate towards Jill Stein right now among the Dems, and it's why the Republican party is literally bankrolling Jill Stein's campaign.

That margin could mean everything on election day.

It come come down to a single state, and if that single state hands Trump the election because 6% of the vote that may have gone to Democrats goes to the Green party instead?

People will not be happy.

It's About Winning

So it's not about purity or anything like that. Elections in the United States, contrary to popular opinion, aren't about "endorsing" much of anything.

I'd like to support the Green party candidate for President, in principle.

But, and I need you to understand this:

Jill Stein cannot win.

Jill Stein won't win a single state.

There is zero chance of that happening, because a majority of voters in that state will not vote for Jill Stein.

Hell, Jill Stein herself will tell you she has no chance of winning. That this is not the point, that this is about "sending a message."

Sending a Message

There is a certain contingent of people out there who believe that voting is about sending a message. That if you go, "Ha, fuck you, Dems" and you vote against them, or vote third party, you're going to make them scramble to support you next time.

In reality, they won't do that at all. They'll be dealing with the fallout of a Trump presidency for the next four years and will be a bit too busy to give a fuck what your anonymous vote "really meant."

They will not suss out what your vote really meant. They will not do deep introspection into their party values as a result of your vote.

They'll simply mechanistically go, "Well, the people who vote third party aren't going to vote for us, anyway, so let's stop focusing on their needs for now."

And you'll get the exact opposite of what you want.

And real people will actually suffer for the outcome.

So you could "send a message."

That they aren't gonna respect or hear, anyway.