Third option candidates .. Who are they? What is their impact on the American presidential race?

The media ignore them, opinion polls shun them, and the two main US presidential candidates do not care about them, who prefer a bilateral arena that is not crowded with other candidates.

They are the "third candidate" choice, and they are not just one candidate, but a large number of candidates who dream of a White House seat despite their realization that their chances of winning or getting close to victory are slim.

Hillary Clinton lost the last presidential election race in 2016 by a slight margin in several states, and Donald Trump won, and despite the multiple reasons theories justifying this result, many commentators ignore the choice of millions of voters to vote for candidates other than Clinton and Trump, which causes the defeat of one candidate and another victory. In the event that the results converge, as happened in those elections, and as is expected to happen in the elections of the third of next November.

In the 2016 elections, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump won a total of 94.2% of the vote (about 129 million voters), while 5.8% of the vote (nearly 7 million voters) went to other candidates.

Despite the mass victory of the two major parties, several candidates from other parties are participating in the 2020 elections (Reuters)

Candidates of the third alternative The

US presidential race this year is not limited to the two candidates, Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden, but rather a number of other candidates, the most important of whom are the Liberal and Green Party candidates, will compete with them.

The Free Party is running for vice president, a university professor in South Carolina, Joe Jorgensen, and a journalist and businessman, Speck Cohen, while the Green Party is represented by Howie Hawkins, the party's founder from New York State, and Angela Nicole Walker, a local legislator from Florida.

In addition to these two parties, there are a number of candidates from smaller and lesser-known parties, such as the Constitutional Party, the Alliance Party, the Socialist Party, the American Solidarity Party, and a number of other independent candidates.

These parties still present their candidates in the elections despite their prior knowledge that their chances are almost impossible, because they cannot keep pace with the huge financial, media and organizational machinery of the Republican and Democratic parties.

With election day approaching, "third party" candidates are not expected to have real chances to appear among the main candidates, and they will not participate in presidential debates that require 15% - at the very least - in five national opinion polls.

Bipartisanship The

constitution does not mention political parties, and accordingly there are no governing or restrictive rules for forming parties or expressing the desire to run for and fight the US presidential battle.

Since its establishment, the United States has witnessed a bipartisan phenomenon in a way not seen in other Western democracies, and the phenomenon reflects a bilateral split in its origin due to the form of the state and a disagreement over the role and borders of federalism and the centralization of the state.

The dominance of the electoral binary phenomenon marked the American political history, which witnessed only 3 serious exceptions:

- In 1865, a third candidate, Millard Fillmore (American Party), got 21.5% of the vote.

- In 1968, George Wallace (the Independence Party of America) got 13.5% of the vote.

- In 1992 Ross Perot (independent candidate) got 19% of the vote.

The Democratic and Republican parties stand strongly behind their candidates Biden (left) and Trump in this election, according to experts (Reuters)

The influence of the third candidate

The 2016 elections witnessed a notable increase in the share of third-party candidates in the presidential race, with Gary Johnson, the Liberal Democrat’s candidate, winning 3.3%, or 4.5 million votes, and Gilles Stein, the Green Party candidate, winning 1.1%, or 1.5 million votes.

The great convergence of the results of several swing states in the 2016 election meant that third-party candidates could take credit for handing the victory over to Trump, especially in states where neither Trump nor Clinton received more than 50% of the vote.

Johnson, the Liberal Democrats' candidate, received more votes than Clinton lost several crucial states, as he garnered 172,000 votes in Michigan, 146,000 in Pennsylvania, and 106,000 votes in Wisconsin, which directly affected The identity of the winner of the race for the White House.

But this year, with the intensification of the bilateral battle between Trump and Biden, and despite the consequences of giving a vote to a candidate who has no chance to win the presidency, voters are risking this opportunity for reasons related to the despair of the two big parties and their candidates.

Experts believe that the 2020 elections differ from the 2016 elections in an important aspect related to the two parties standing firmly behind their candidates in ways that were not available in the 2016 elections.

Votes

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4 years ago, a large portion of the Republican and Democratic voters were dissatisfied with both candidates. There are supporters of candidate Bernie Sanders from the Democrats, and they are in the millions, and there were enemies of Trump among the millions of Republicans.

Some voted in a protest manner with the other party, and millions chose to vote for third-party candidates, but the 2020 elections - however - will not be an exception, as third-party candidates are expected to receive millions of votes.