37% are solid MAGA; Musk is going to start a third party.

[Wiz Imp]

29. The US is not anything like Canada when it comes to elections

Third parties draw voters from existing voters from one of the 2 parties or from non voters. So the nonvoters for either of the 2 parties don't change the results for those parties when they vote 3rd party. For previous existing voters, third parties generally draw more existing voters from one party or the other. In Musk's case, he's not going to draw many if any Democratic voters. So any existing voters drawn to the third party will come from the Republican Party. This lowers the vote total for Republicans without impacting Democratic votes. The existence of a third party is not going to get additional nonvoters to vote for Republicans - that would make absolutely no sense. So clearly, Musk's third party would effectively throw the election to Democrats because they are drawing pretty much exclusively from Republicans, lowering the Republican vote totals. When things are as close as they were in 2024, it takes relatively few voters to switch their votes from Republican to 3rd party to throw the election to the Democrats.