Neoliberal

Oh Harris got a huge bump, but as I said it's coming out of a nasty pit that Biden slowly dug over a year and then rapidly deepened in the 3 and a half weeks before stepping down. Also the honeymoon period is real, even Obama felt it in 2010. This exponential growth isn't going to hold daily for 4 months, no amount of Jeb memes will make that happen.

Also the bulk of that bump is black voters and to a lesser extent young women(Biden was actually two points behind in the female voter believe it or not, Harris was 50/50 even before being picked, probably ahead now), which aren't the biggest demographics in the swing states(Outside of Georgia, but as I said there's a lot of things against that. I ran the numbers. In 2020, if third parties didn't vote at all in 2020 Georgia is the only state that 100% no doubt changes outcome and goes red.). Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are both mostly white and a bit on the older side. The biggest non-white groups are Hispanics who are not leaning super hard either way(Trump actually made huge gains with Hispanics in 2020 compared to 2016 thanks to easing up on the Mexico rhetoric and the fact culturally many many Hispanics are actually very conservative and/or basically white. The democrats mostly have the Haitian-DR guys, the Cubans went full GOP, the rest are pretty split). Michigan has the largest Arab community in the country who are probably going to have the highest (did not vote) ratio of anyone, otherwise pretty white. Detroit is also not a great mascot for successful big city.

Also on the note of Georgia and third party ratios, that also impacted the last two elections. In 2020, for example, Georgia is safely red without third parties. Arizona would probably also go Republican though that's iffier and Wisconsin would be too close to call leaning blue. . Narrow Biden victory or 2000 scenario for Trump. For context in 2016 the effect is even greater, no third parties means Trump takes New Hampshire and Minnesota, and 4 more - New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and Maine-State are all within the margins and too close to say. The Popular Vote is razor thin and could go either way depending on those states margins with the Libertarian voters, but Trump would lean winning that too in 2016 without 3rd party.

That's another thing to consider. Third Parties have been mostly right leaning since 2008 if not 2004. 2000 was the last one in which they firmly were left leaning(Ralph Nader did gang busters and the Libertarians of the era actually pulled slightly more from democrats, Reform Party swung right, but was falling apart, Constitution Party did crap all), this was also probably true in 1996 and 1992 given the Reform Party was pretty evenly split and the Greens were the second strongest third party by far. 2016 was the peak of this, Trump would have won by Obama 2012 margins if not for third parties and probably would have won the popular vote. In 2020 they at least cost him Georgia and depending on how a few thousand Libertarians in Wisconsin and Arizona voted possibly the election(Although let's be real if it came down to one state with razor thin margins Trump would pull a Bush and take it).

But times are changing. 2020 was already a far weaker effect than 2016. And it's not just about RFK.

The Libertarians have since swung left again, ousting most of the Gary Johnson era guys, Chase Oliver is a democrat. Polls suggest in the last month or two they've actually been pulling more democrats than republicans for the first time since 2004. (In 2002 they were 43 R - 57 D, but by 2006 it was 59 R to 41 D and it probably peaked at 70+ R around the Tea Party era and has been sliding left since).

Jill Stein has really good name recognition and has been around longer than any other third party name, they're also set to either match or overtake the Libertarians for the first time since 2010. They lean like 80-85% left voters and the only reason it isn't higher is the Russia issue. They also no longer have the bad press coming from Canada they did in 2020(Canada's green party was imploding at the time and trickle over news confused some people).

The Constitution Party(which pulls big margins from the right) has never been able to have a surge year like the other two, they topped out at 0.193% of the vote compared to 3 or 4%, They've always been the 'third party of the third parties' so to speak. And they're weakening further. And to make things more complicated the guy they picked this year is a DINOcrat, which while it's not enough to change the ratios massively it probably shifts a few percentage points, 85% R to 80% R or something.

There's also the surging new guy on the block, the Party of Socialism and Liberation, which has grown massively since 2016 and it set to outpreform the Constitution Party this year and potentially yank their Number 5/Number 3 spot. Probably 95%+ democrats, albeit they mostly operate in hard blue states so unlikely to hurt swing states,

Oh and there's Rocky Fuente. I don't know what to say about him. He's a coalition candidate of several small third parties, some of whom are left local parties, one is an old Bernie Bro party, some are old rightist parties from the Reform era, there's a few newer alt right ones, and he WAS the Reform Party guy last time albeit they went with RFK now. He's been both a democrat and a republican and has switched third parties 3 or 4 times. I think he's pulling mostly 50-50 and he's not doing well enough for the margins to matter, i dunno. The kind of folks who support someone like that probably are never voting mainline anyway let's be real.

And then there's RFK Jr, the wild card. When he first entered everyone said he was a Trump Spoiler, then in May and June and July he was suddenly hurting Biden, and now I'm hearing the first one again. So it's probably not a crazy huge margin either way, 60-40 or tighter. Ross Perot was so evenly pulling people still debate which party he hurt more in 1992(General consensus these days is probably Bush, but Clinton was winning no matter what and maybe just snagged one or two states extra. That's debated though, at the time Clinton blamed him for narrowing his victory so...). I will say he is seemingly snagging both Niki Haley types and Joe Biden types so we'll see. He's got more numbers for the rest combined so it really comes down to him. Though I do note if it leans left that's not good combined with everything else, and if it leans right the effect is mostly neutralized by all the prior stuff(also if he leans right and then drops out to endorse Trump at the last minute in October that's bad since almost certainly a few people who would been swayed Dem otherwise wouldn't have time to change their minds. Meanwhile if he leans left and drops out that helps Harris).

I will also note Chase Oliver is a Georgia politician, only left the democrats due to Iraq, and is pro-abortion. This isn't Gary Johnson. He's the reason I'm extremely certain Harris isn't snagging Georgia. The 3rd parties were actively stealing Trump voters in 2020 and cost him the state, now the trend has reversed. None of the others have swing state edges of note.

The Third Parties have been snagging a point or two away from the Republicans since George Bush's era and I think a lot of people forgot that's not a permanent direction for them.