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No, it wouldn't. It's very difficult to quantify how many people don't vote as a protest vs. don't vote out of apathy, but the Green Party, Libertarian Party, and all other third parties combined took home less than 2% of the total vote in the last Presidential election. Even if we assumed that just as many people were staying home in protest, and that they were entirely made up of disgruntled leftists, that would only maybe affect the outcome of some swing states if the numbers are unevenly distributed. It certainly wouldn't remake history.
The internet (and Lemmy especially) might be full of high-minded leftists claiming they stay home on moral principle, but the majority of people who don't vote are just tired, working class people who have to squeeze voting in around work and family on a random Tuesday. If you want them to turn out, you have to give them a candidate that speaks to them enough that they'll take time out of their day vote. (Well, that or a make mail-in voting universal in all 50 states, or make voting day a federal holiday, or a bunch of other things that will never get through Congress.)
I think president Gore would have been a very different (and better) history. Ditto Hilary.
Well, again, it's pretty hard to quantify how many people are not voting on principle, but again, if we use third-party voters as a guide, that's probably not true. For Hillary, analysis shows that even if every single Jill Stien voter had gone to Clinton, she still would have needed to win over 50% of Gary Johnson's voters (who were obviously unlikely to consider themselves leftists) to win..
Bush and Gore is different, since Bush won by 537 votes in Florida, so sure, if the Nader voters had gone to Gore, he would have won. You could probably also assume that there were 537 disgruntled leftists who decided to stay home as well, but with a margin that small, almost anything could have changed the outcome. If all the voters who stayed home with a cold went out and voted Gore might have won.
You're working from a premise that there's a large contingent of leftists who are withholding their vote on principle, and if they just voted, the Democrats would always win. But there's no data to assume that's true, and it's just as likely that there are as many conservatives doing the exact same thing. So what's point here? If only all the leftists who didn't vote on principle came out, but all the conservatives who didn't vote on principle still stayed home, things would be different? You could blame pretty much any group for your candidates' loss with logic like that.
Ever heard the saying conservatives fall in line? So no I don't think conservatives are doing the exact same thing.
Well, if it's a platitude it must be true.