Anyway, it came out that Anderson led the poll because he was outside the establishment and it supposedly made you sound all smart and hip to support him....until you actually had to explain why.
I find this to be the case with most people and their political choices.
I'm in a Facebook group where the latest "thing" is to say to hell with Trump and Biden, I'm all in for RFK Jr (sometimes referred to idiotically as JFK Jr). And I think it's the same damned thing - not an establishment politician, outside the mainstream, beholden to no one - but almost to the last, his major qualification is - he's NOT one of the other two. I mean, I can TELL you why I want Trump to win - but Biden and Hillary voters usually said "not Trump" (ok, SOME Hillary voters said "because she's a woman" which is nearly as dumb).
People want to vote for the "other guy" because it's cool.
I didn't like Carter one bit - but I wasn't too keen on Reagan. As you probably recall me mentioning before, as a protest vote - I wrote in NIXON. It even made the local news. I was twenty. It was cool for my vote to be seen.
I wish I knew the word for it - it's "fashionable" to announce that YOU had the sense to vote for the OTHER guy - that somehow, your own political acumen is superior to others - kind of how there was this online FURY about voting for Ron Paul years ago.
We still have an electoral system that favors FPTP - "first past the post" (a reference to horse racing). The "winner" isn't the one with 50% plus portion of the votes - but the most. This is the way most of us vote for multiple choices and many have an equal chance of winning, such as when the office decides on a restaurant. Since the most straightforward way to back a winner is to winnow it down to TWO - thus more or less assuring that ONE of them will have greater than 50% - we tend to have a two party system. (Actually when the office DOES choose a restaurant, it's common to have a runoff between the top two).
But the simple fact is - ONE of these two WILL be President (barring unforeseen death of one of them). That's just a near statistical certainty.