In 2016 it looked like 3rd parties in America had a real chance to come to the forefront and gain some traction in our very broken but very powerful 2-party system. Unfortunately for Libertarians at least, the person that they had nominated for the job wasn't a very good speaker and with the very limited amount of media time he received, most of which was to make him look bad, he did exactly that.
In 2020 the powers that be did their job very well of convincing the people that this election was too important to "throw your vote away" on a 3rd party candidate that doesn't have a chance.
Gary Johnson was a very weak candidate despite the fact that on paper at least, he has some very good ideas and even though it is tough for anyone to follow a truly Libertarian ideal set, it didn't really matter at that point because when he did get exposure on a national or international level, the gears of the political machine put him there solely to make him look weak and they accomplished that goal very well.
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To be fair it wasn't very difficult to make Johnson appear "out there" after the controversy about not being included in the debates came to a stop when he appeared on MSNBC only to make a mockery of himself by talking in some sort of silly tongue stuck out making nonsense noises. I don't know what his objective was there but that was absolutely absurd and well, he deserved the mockery that was headed his way after that.
I think that as far as his ideas, just like most Libertarian ideas, were good; but when the entire machine is working against you and your party, they will remain obscure. I have voted Libertarian any time there is a candidate in that category all but one time in the past 20 years and honestly, I never do so thinking that the candidate is going to win. We all know that they are not going to. But I ask the question again: Why don't more people vote 3rd party especially when it seems to be very common with both major parties about how they are not pleased with the candidates that they eventually get stuck with.
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Getting over a million people to vote for you is no small feat especially when you consider the fact that Libertarian candidates tend to have very little money for campaigning relatively speaking and a near blackout as far as any media coverage is concerned.
I think that more people don't vote 3rd party because of the fact that they have bought into the notion that if they do that, they are in fact electing the "other guy" instead of the person that more closely aligns with their leanings. For conservatives like me, this would be Republicans and for Green Party it is likely Democrats. We all know this. The fear does get in there that if you vote for who you would really like to be elected that the race could end up being close and if the side you like the least gets elected, you would in some regard be part of the reason why that happened. This of course is assuming that our votes are even counted at all and I have my doubts about that too.
People probably would be surprised if they answered a blind quiz to find out which party they align with the most as many of my friends did back in 2016. For many conservatives, they probably align more so with the Libertarian party than they do Republicans but most of the time they don't even pay any attention to the candidates in that category.
I'd like it if that would change but the powers that be are very good at keeping their power and I don't think we are going to see a change in this in my lifetime. As politics get more and more toxic it is actually a very effective tool for them to feature the other side in a negative light rather than promote the good points of their own party. If they make the population scared enough, they will do whatever they are told.