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And even if they don't win, third parties can influence policies of the main two. The main two want to avoid splitting voters across themselves and similar-but-different third parties. Third parties gaining a significant percentage can pull the main parties in their direction to avoid losing those voters again.

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Yes, absolutely!

We had a case of this in Massachusetts this year in our governor's race. One of the third party candidates did so well during the first debate that all of the third-party candidates were then blocked from future debates. Of course, there's nothing exactly admitting that, but it seems like it could hardly be a coincidence. (In fact, the third-party candidate that did well was _uninvited_ from a future debate that he had already accepted an invitation to.)

Bonus: he ended up earning the minimum 5% vote needed to establish a new political party[0] in the state!

[0]: http://www.unitedindependent.org/

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