Wild cards for the election

There are two presidential candidates remaining that have a realistic shot at winning the election: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Democrat vs. Republican. Deleted emails vs. sexual assault allegations. All these descriptions illustrate what the future of America could be.

This year’s election has many people conflicted on who to vote for. It’s a common misconception that you can only vote for the major party candidates and not the third party candidates. This is mostly because the third party candidates often do not publicize their campaigns as much as the primary candidates.

But in this election, I think we are definitely seeing a change in the votes for third party nominees due to the strong opposition for the primary candidates.

Libertarian nominee, Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee, Jill Stein are both on the ballot in more than 20 states for this year. Johnson earned an eight percent vote and Stein has a four percent vote according to recent polls from Washington Examiner. This is a win for both parties, especially when you look at former elections and the pullings from third party candidates.

There haven’t been any major acclaimed votes for third party candidates since the presidential campaign of 1992. Ross Perot ran as a third party candidate and won 19 percent of the electoral votes, but did not win.

Seeing these numbers, there likely will not be an extraordinary turn out for the third party candidates, but we can hope. Especially because most of the country doesn’t see eye-to-eye with the either primary candidate, including me.

Due to the potential low turnout combined with the electoral college, many say a vote for a third-party candidate is a wasted vote. However, the votes in favor of the third party will show the primary candidates the values of society and they can make changes accordingly.

Because this year’s election is controversial than most, I think the third party candidates would have a decent chance at winning if they focused on bringing themselves out into the public more.

But I do believe the third party candidates still hold the wildcards for this year’s election, shaping it as the days go by.