The animating concept behind the Trump campaign will be chaos. This is what history shows us fascists do when given the chance to participate in democratic political campaigns: They create chaos. They do it because chaos works to their advantage. They revel in it, because they can see how profoundly chaos unnerves democratic-republicans—everyone, that is, whether liberal or conservative, who believes in the basic idea of a representative government that is built around neutral rules. Fascism exists to pulverize neutral rules.
So they campaign with explicit intention to instill a sense of chaos. And then comes the topper: They have the audacity to insist that the only solution to the chaos—that they themselves have either grossly exaggerated or in some cases created!—is to vote for them: “You see, there is nothing but chaos afoot, and only we can restore order!”
No, because you assume both sides are equally likely to switch their vote to third-parties. Right-wing voters are less susceptible to fits of conscience, and are much more reliable getting to the voting booths. They are more likely retirees, or zealous Fox News foot soldiers. The GOP knows this and that’s why mushy “both sides suck” third-party pushes disfavor democrats.
The lowest rates of voter turnout are actually in red states on average, which are 50s-low 60s, and Trump arguably won because of the 13% of Obama-Trump swing voters. Not all Trump voters are even politically engaged just like most Americans, some see the media and Democrats going crazy about him yet haven’t felt any impact of this on their daily lives so they don’t connect with the “vote for us because we’re not Trump” messaging at all. The most ignored group of Trump voters are people who just vote for him for some dumb superficial reason and don’t really care about politics, next to Obama-Trump swing voters.
I hear your point, but I do think “Obama-Trump swing voters” is a defined group that is fun to talk about without any true diagnostic purpose. It captures too many different types of voters. They’re not all just those who change affiliation with the slightest breeze - many are probably people who went down alt-right rabbit holes between 2012 and 2016, or the cumulative effect of Fox News, or voters who more often vote against the incumbent party seeking “change,” and so on.
But also, even if the lowest rates of turnout is in red states, that doesn’t mean that in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, etc GOP voters will be more reliably good foot soldiers. Turnout naturally will trend lower where the votes in fact matter the least, I’m sure that’s true for both parties. The relevant metric is comparative voter turnout in swing states.