@wolfwood:
That's one thing i'm always wondering. It's not the time now, but when will it ever be the time?
When its a legitimately viable candidate that can actually conceivably really get a chunk of a vote from both sides and get 25-30% of it, and win at least some of the electoral college, rather than being someone that will just leech a few thousand votes from one side in a 50-50 race and muck up a swing state.
Or when the third party has actually spent the years doing the groundwork and gotten candidates in on local levels, and built up the support needed to actually get a presidential candidate anywhere. Rather than just showing up once every 4 years and hoping to magically make it.
It's not unheard of, Ross Perot did it in 92 and 96.. (just three presidents ago) and in one of those he managed 20 million votes, nearly 19% of the total vote, and might have done better if he hadn't dropped out mid race for a month.
Compared to say, Ralph Nader in 2000 took 2% of the vote, but took it almost entirely from Al Gore, (who did win the popular vote) and cost him the election purely by taking just a few hundred votes in key states that otherwise would have almost certainly gone to Gore.
Similarly, in this election, either Trump or Sanders probably could have run third party and gotten about 20% of the vote…. but they mostly would have just destroyed the party they were closest to rather than drawing from the middle. (Heck, given how Trump is doing, as a third party he just might have beaten out the Republican party and set a real stage for a third party... but no way he'd beat both sides without Republican support)
You can look at the polls and the support a candidate has, and how close the race between the main two is, to make an informed decision on a third party vote. And this year with a chance of Trump, rather than say, moderate John McCain, is not the time to risk the country on a protest.
NO ONE is actually going for the third party guys this year because they actually like their platform or think they have a real chance or that it's the most amazing candidate they've seen in their lives... they're almost purely protest vote squandering because they don't like Hillary.