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gjm comments on On Voting for Third Parties - Less Wrong
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The assumption you appear to be making here is that you're either between the two mainstream parties (and "unbelievably unimaginative") or further out than one of them along the axis running between them, somewhere near to where "their base" lives (and presumably not so unimaginative).
I think this assumption is very wrong, and I don't see any reason for accepting it. It's wrong for at least two reasons. (1) Politics is not one-dimensional. You might be fairly near the middle on that primary axis but far from the two mainstream options on some other axis. (2) You may be further out than "between the two mainstream alternatives" but the nearest applicable "base" may be further out and highly undesirable. (For instance, you might consider that the centre ground between Republicans and Democrats is too far left while thinking the Tea Party is too far right -- or, for that matter, too far out on some other axis.)
Statistically speaking, politics is largely one-dimensional, and there is no plausible case to be made for anything beyond two dimensions. The single axis covers >80%, the two-axis graph covers 95%+ of voting behavior, and the rest is more likely to be overfitting than any actual additional axis.
Two is enough to invalidate the assumption I think Oligopsony made, but in any case what's true "statistically speaking" is relevant only to those who are statistically fairly typical. LW is full of people who are, in various ways, unusual, and there is some reason to think that quite a few LW participants have unconventional political opinions. (And Oligopsony was specifically addressing the less-conventional, I think; hence "assuming your politics aren't so unbelievably unimaginative ...".)