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With the presidential election just weeks away, polls are tight between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. And that means supporters of third-party candidates may help decide who wins the White House. NPR's Luke Garrett reports.
LUKE GARRETT, BYLINE: While the Democratic and Republican tickets battle for undecided voters, another voting bloc may prove consequential this November.
TIM MALLOY: The race is on now. It's extremely close, and the third-party candidates, though very low percentage numbers, are still factors. When you're looking at a race could be turned by three or four percentage points, or maybe less, they're still there.
GARRETT: That's Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy. He says third-party voters can be won or lost on a single issue.
MALLOY: There are people with a single issue, and they have a lot of power.
GARRETT: Think 2016, when Green Party Jill Stein won a lot of liberal and environmentally minded voters in key states like Michigan and Wisconsin. Trump won those states over then-candidate Hillary Clinton. This year, both Vice President Harris and former President Trump may lose votes to third-party candidates. The question is, how many?
Millennial and longtime third-party voter John Quinn is a self-described pro-life voter who opposes Harris' support for abortion rights, but he also disagrees with Trump's immigration stance. Quinn plans to vote for the American Solidarity Party, a Christian Democratic political group. And even though he knows they won't win, he finds his vote meaningful.
JOHN QUINN: If the American Solidarity Party's few votes for a truly pro-life vision are what costs the Republican ticket the election, well, hopefully in 2028 they take pro-lifers more seriously.
GARRETT: Gen Zer Anton Navazo will also vote third party. Navazo lives in Seattle and voted for President Biden in 2020. But this year he's voting and campaigning for Stein, mostly because of her support for Palestinians. He doesn't expect the Green Party to win either, but...
ANTON NAVAZO: It does send a message. You know, if either the Democrats or the Republicans think the third-party vote is why they lost the election, then I think that the next election cycle, they need to try harder to earn the votes of those people.
GARRETT: Not all third-party voters are so sure. Twenty-year-old Wisconsinite Roman Fritz finds himself in a catch-22. Fritz was the only delegate from the Badger State to vote present during Harris' nomination at the Democratic National Convention.
ROMAN FRITZ: I opposed Harris' nomination for the reason that she doesn't support an arms embargo. But in November, I think I plan to vote for Harris.
GARRETT: He supports Stein's policies but prefers Harris over Trump. Many third-party voters struggle with this voting dilemma, says Archon Fung, a Harvard political science professor. Fung tells his students considering a third-party vote for Stein to close their eyes and imagine it's the morning after the election and Trump won.
ARCHON FUNG: What do you say to yourself when you look yourself in the mirror? Like, one might be, I'm OK because the thing I care about is this war in Gaza. Or you might think, oh, my gosh, there are all these other things at stake too, then. And, oh, my gosh, what have I done?
GARRETT: Fung says this thought experiment also applies to conservative voters who oppose abortion rights and are considering a third-party candidate after Trump's recent flip-flopping on abortion bans. No matter the choice, Fung says voters have to own their vote, no matter who wins.
Luke Garrett, NPR News, Washington.
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