So you don’t like Trump or Harris – here’s why it’s still best to vote for one of them

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Daniel F. Stone, Bowdoin College

(THE CONVERSATION) Many Americans are not thrilled with either of the two major-party candidates for president. As of Oct. 4, 2024, polls showed that 46.5% had an unfavorable opinion of Kamala Harris and 52.6% felt unfavorably toward Donald Trump.

Some of these unhappy voters are considering voting for a third-party candidate, or not voting at all. They may be thinking of those actions as a form of protest against the two-party system dominant in the United States, or against these two particular candidates.

For example, in a September poll 3.5% of Michigan voters said they planned to vote for a candidate other than Harris and Trump.

At first glance, these choices might seem perfectly reasonable: If you don’t like a candidate, don’t vote for that person. But my work as a scholar of cognitive biases – systematic errors people make in their thinking – makes me fear that this option does not best serve the interests of those voters.

Instead, protest voting is in fact likely to harm the democratic process, potentially leading to the election of the candidate the majority of voters overall, and protest voters specifically, most dislike....