[defrost]

> So why would you stand if you're guaranteed to lose?

From a country with Preferential Voting: you run to make preferencing deals that benefit the people that vote for your particular ideals.

It's on the record that X% of the popuation support the stance you take.

Further, it goes all the way to the houses and breaks the party stranglehold; Australia has 10 Independents, more than Canda, the US, and the UK combined.

Politics shoud be about more than "a little king" as POTUS, it should be about the house reflecting the proportional views of the population and weight being given to views represented and the deals that aligned views can make together.

The US FPTP system was doomed (from an iterative dynamic system perspective) to devolve into a two party non representative end game despite the express opposition of many Founders to Party Politics. It's what happens when a poort voting system is scaled up over centuries.