If the people who didn't vote because they didn't like either major party had voted for a third party, then that third party would have won.
And if they had all voted for me then I would have won! Hypotheticals are fun. Can you show me the slightest bit of evidence that all these poor, oppressed voters are going to vote the same way as each other? My point was that the Third Party of wierd and McTraveller ain't winning the votes of, say, my mother. And if they
don't command huge support, they are merely, in the immortal words of Monty Python, "splitters". I don't need evidence that the number of people disappointed in the two main parties is very large, I want evidence stating they share common denominators
other than distaste for the main parties that elevate them above "irrelevant." The Libertarians and the Greens would do a lot better if they were won party according to your logic, but that's equally silly to say because they also oppose each other just as fervently.
The idea that third parties is irrelevant is a very carefully constructed propaganda campaign created specifically to keep people from voting for them.
That fact does not, in and of itself, mean that third parties
aren't irrelevant, because they
are. It merely means that hypothetically that need not be the case, but hypotheticals are just hypotheticals. You could hypothetically become President of the United States, but I'm not going to sit here and discuss the implications of a PTTG?? presidency because I don't see it happening anytime soon (well at least not until I'm more bored and have fewer projects to complete; we'll see then).
My point is third parties in the US are screwed fundamentally because they are all loaded with fringe-groups, unrespectable, poorly-funded, and derive most of their electoral support not on the basis of their platform but on the basest form of "we aren't those guys," and you can argue about cause and effect (propaganda doesn't work if there ain't a seed of truth) here all day but the fact is that that is how they are now and that is where inertia keeps them. They are like moons: they don't have any light of their own, they merely reflect the light of the main parties. And the most damning thing about them is that anyone who sees the state of third parties does not think "let's take an existing third party and do the hard and unforgiving work of making it more legitimate", but "I'm going to make my
own party, with blackjack, and hookers!" It's self-limiting. This election cycle was the best opportunity in a long time for a third party to challenge the dynamic and how did they do? Better than before, but "better" != "good enough", and "good enough" is the only thing that matters.