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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1912_United_States_presidential_election
Here. This is how your system actually works. Not how you believe it to work. Wilson won with less than 42% of the votes because a third party managed to be popular enough to split the votes and stole enough votes from Taft. This is what would happen if people actually listened to you. Thank fuck they don't.
Those votes did not belong to Taft in the first place, so they were not "stolen." They belonged to the voters, who can give them to whoever they choose. As a matter of fact, Taft got fewer votes than Roosevelt, so if anything it would be more correct to say that Taft is the one that "stole" votes from him.
Of course, it is impossible to say what would've happened if it were just between two candidates, there is no way to know that every Roosevelt voter would vote Taft or that every Taft voter would vote Roosevelt.
Uuuh, splitting hairs on my choice of words. The republican party split into two and so did the votes. The fact that I said "stole" wasn't part of the point. And ofc you're gonna say it's impossible to know..
It's just a coincidence that in 1908 it was 6.4m vs 7.7m votes (dems and republicans respectively) and in 1912 it was 6.3m vs 3.5m + 4.1m (Dems vs republicans and progressives respectively)
Yeah, the numbers stayed more or less the same except the republican vote got split. But yeah, that's just a coincidence, we have no way of knowing!
splitting hairs on my choice of words
If I don't keep y'all honest on terminology, you'll say all kinds of ridiculous nonsense to make my side look bad, whether it's "stealing votes" or "helping the other side."
It’s just a coincidence that in 1908 it was 6.4m vs 7.7m votes (dems and republicans respectively) and in 1912 it was 6.3m vs 3.5m + 4.1m (Dems vs republicans and progressives respectively)
And in 1916, when there were only two major candidates, it was 9.1m democrat vs 8.5m republican.
Exactly, thank you! People went back to voting republican again since there was no Roosevelt to split the vote! Now you're getting it!
And lost. Because the electorate was shifting between 1908 and 1916, so there's no reason to think that the results of 1912 would've been the same as 1908.