I don’t know about ‘discourage’ since I was referring to protest 3rd party votes. But too many people didn’t even know Biden dropped out to suggest the rhetoric was causing meaningful influence.
Now, I do know that RFK and Chase Oliver together took more votes (~0.9%) than the Greens and PSL combined (~0.7%). So as far as protest votes over Both-Sideism likely went it probably didn’t hurt Harris, and may have actually been a net gain for Harris.
The entire combined third party vote would have had to pretty much 100% gone for Harris for the Democratic Party to have won the popular vote (which is still irrelevant because of the electoral college.)
I don’t know about ‘discourage’ since I was referring to protest 3rd party votes. But too many people didn’t even know Biden dropped out to suggest the rhetoric was causing meaningful influence.
Now, I do know that RFK and Chase Oliver together took more votes (~0.9%) than the Greens and PSL combined (~0.7%). So as far as protest votes over Both-Sideism likely went it probably didn’t hurt Harris, and may have actually been a net gain for Harris.
The entire combined third party vote would have had to pretty much 100% gone for Harris for the Democratic Party to have won the popular vote (which is still irrelevant because of the electoral college.)