In This Election Every Vote Actually Does Matter

Trump’s chances of winning are uncomfortable. You might like Clinton, or you might not, but I can’t see how she’s not minimally the lesser of two evils. If you’re in swing state, please go out and vote for her.

Non-swing state votes can still count. Here’s a full explanation, and here’s the summary: Libertarians are 0.3% of the national vote away from federal funding for 2020. The Green Party isn’t anywhere near. They would need more than 10X as many additional supporters as the Libertarians do to make the cutoff. Independents/write ins can’t carry their wins forward.

This is not an attempt to have a Libertarian president. This is an attempt to get a 3rd party enough money to be a nuisance. Any 3rd party with money (even one you don’t like) will force the 2 major parties to compete for votes on topics they are currently leaving alone, like 4th amendment rights and the drug war. Bonus: you put Libertarians in a position where their best option to advance is accepting financial government support. That’s worth at least the laughs, right?

You can see if your state is a swing state here. Scroll down to “Who’s Ahead in Each State and How Much?” If the bar for your state is entirely one color, you are not in a swing state, and I advocate you vote for Johnson. If the bar is two colors, I advocate you vote for Clinton.

Here is a map which I will attempt to update daily from now until the election:

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

No state where I advocate voting for Johnson is rated as even 1% likely to tip the election. (Oregon is the highest, with a 0.9% chance.) However, I understand the downsides are unusually severe in this election, so I have prepared an additional map for the truly risk-adverse.

States in light blue have a chance of tipping the election between 1% and 0.1%, while those in orange have a <0.1% chance of tipping the election. Utah is a special snowflake for people who want to add the constraint of making sure no 3rd party holds any electoral college votes.

These are states which Five Thirty Eight says have no outcomes for the other party within an 80% interval and which also have a <0.1% chance of tipping the election.

Utah is marked as a special category because of Evan McMullin. While Five Thirty Eight says Utah does have <0.1% chance of tipping the election it also says that McMullin has a 10% chance of getting one or more votes in the electoral college, and this is likely where they would come from. Five Thirty Eight also gives a 1.1% chance of an electoral college deadlock. Some people have special concerns about any electoral college votes going to 3rd parties at all, so it has been placed in a special category.