With less than a month to go to election day in the United States, Democrats are locked in a tight battle for every available vote in the presidential campaign and have taken on the third-party candidates they see as potential “spoilers”.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC), the party’s executive branch, issued a television advertisement on Friday attacking Jill Stein, the longtime Green Party candidate to whom some progressives disillusioned with the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, have flocked.

The advertisement, which is running in the swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, blames Stein for Republican challenger Donald Trump’s 2016 win and warns that “a vote for Stein is really a vote for Trump” – a refrain Democrats have regularly levelled against her in tight races between their candidates and Trump.

The video also includes a comment by former President Trump, saying, “Jill Stein? I like her very much.”

The advertisement, the first against the third-party candidate, signals Democrats’ growing worry that every lost vote may cost them such a razor-thin election. Stein has been polling at about 1 percent, similar to progressive academic and independent candidate Cornel West and Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver.

In some battleground states, those votes may make all the difference.

Third-party history

Third-party candidates have long been blamed for their impact on tight election outcomes — most notably in 2000 when Green Party nominee Ralph Nader earned 97,421 votes in Florida, a state that eventually went to George W Bush, along with the presidency, by only 537 votes.

But third-party candidates and supporters have rejected the blame, arguing that they are working to challenge a fundamentally broken two-party system and giving voters a greater choice.

“You don’t have a democracy unless it’s a competitive democracy at election time,” Nader recently told Al Jazeera. “Historically, the function of third parties in an Electoral College system has never really been to win elections but to have new agendas,” he said.

With only two choices, Democrat or Republican, Nader added, “on major issues, they are very similar.”

A Gallup poll this month found 58 percent of US voters agree that a third major party is needed because the Republican and Democratic parties “do such a poor job” of representing the American people.

Stein on Israel

While she has virtually no chance of winning the presidency, Stein’s message has been particularly resonant for some voters during Israel’s war in Gaza and Democrats’ and Republicans’ unwavering support for it. She has been a consistent critic of US support for Israel – a position that has won her new supporters this election cycle.

“The Kamala Harris campaign is looking for a scapegoat,” she told The Washington Post this week, referring to the Harris campaign’s concern about her candidacy. “They could change their policy right now. The problem is they would rather lose the election than end the genocide”.

This week, the Abandon Harris campaign, a Michigan-based Muslim group that says it aims to hold Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration “accountable for the Gaza genocide”, endorsed Stein for president.

“Our movement remains dedicated to ensuring that the American people, especially the Muslim-American community, recognize the responsibility we share in standing up against oppression and using all our power to stop genocide — wherever it may arise,” the group said in a statement.

“On the precipice of the election, we endorse Jill Stein.”