The Electoral College is the big factor in a third-party nightmare for Democrats

That doesn’t mean well-funded third-party candidates with significant or universal ballot access don’t pose a major threat to Biden. Analysis of way-too-early polling by FiveThirtyEight suggests that those third-party candidates currently draw more voters away from Biden than Trump. But the Electoral College — which has otherwise favored Republicans in the Trump era — could blunt those effects. In the past 100 years, only three third-party candidates have even carried a single state in the Electoral College: progressive favorite son Robert La Follette won Wisconsin in 1924, then-South Carolina Gov. But third-party candidates don’t need to have large magnitudes of support to swing an election.