Many things that everyone knows, are not true. Sometimes, quite rarely, one of those widely-believed falsehoods not only turns out not to be true, but obscures the fact that the exact opposite is true.
Most people believe that small political parties siphon off votes from one of the two major parties. Mainstream media repeatedly declares, without bothering to cite evidence because its obviousness rises to the level of self-evident, that Ralph Nader cost Al Gore the 2000 election (not true) and Jill Stein sucked away enough Democratic votes from Hillary Clinton to put Donald Trump in the White House (also not true).
Let us, for the purpose of this essay, set aside the usual counterarguments to the claim that you shouldn’t vote Green they’re just spoilers: no presidential election is decided by a single vote so you can’t possibly individually change any outcome, people who don’t live in swing states really have no reason to worry about tipping an election, parties ought to have to earn votes, voting for a lesser evil is still voting for evil, a little party will never become bigger until we stop overthinking our tactical voting and simply support that candidate and the party we like best.
But—are small parties really electoral succubi? First, a look at Republican losers who blamed third parties for their losses.
Running as a Progressive in 1912, a vengeful Teddy Roosevelt out to punish his former protege for deviating from progressive Republicanism is alleged to have sucked away votes from William Howard Taft. We did wind up with President Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat—a result cited as the ultimate example of a third-party candidate splitting a party.
But historians forget to mention that it was a four-way race. Wilson faced his own “spoiler,” from his left: Eugene Debs of the Socialist Party, who got six percent of the popular vote. Taft was such a weak candidate that neither Teddy nor Debs made a difference; Wilson would have won no matter what.
Pundits say Ross Perot created a big enough sucking sound of votes from George H.W. Bush in 1992 to hand the race to Bill Clinton. Pundits are mistaken: Perot pulled equally from the Democrats and the Republicans. Libertarian Gary Johnson is unfairly blamed for contributing to Trump’s defeat in 2020.
Similarly, left-leaning third-parties—since 2000, this has meant the Greens—have never poached from Democrats in big enough numbers to change the outcome. Green Party supporters tend to be leftists like me, who would otherwise not vote at all. If the only two parties on the ballot were the Democrats and Republicans, we’d sit on our hands.
Hellbound and Down 
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