They’re concentrated in uncompetitive states, not the battlegrounds that determine the election results.
Zandi et al. 24 – Chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania.
Mark Zandi, Brendan Lacerda, and Justin Begly, “Who Will Be the Next President?” Moody’s Analytics, January 2024, pp. 13, https://www.economy.com/getfile?q=95674FFE-7734-4401-877A-FE331AECD442&app=download.
One caveat is that, historically, third parties have tended to experience limited success in battleground states. They typically accumulate most of their votes in uncompetitive states, including Alaska, Vermont, Utah, Montana and Idaho, where the Green and Libertarian parties have a more established presence. For a third-party candidate to swing the results, they would need to secure a meaningful vote share in one or multiple contentious battleground states, similar to Ralph Nader in Florida during the 2000 election (see Table 1).