If Trump runs 3rd party, who will get more votes?

[DaleCooper]

It's a rather hackneyed comparison to make, but if Trump ran third party, the electoral map (and popular vote) would resemble 1912. Trump would win a bulk of the deep Republican states (WV, AL, WY, etc.) and the mainstream Republican would be lucky to win maybe UT (like Taft in 1912). It's hard for me to imagine them winning any other state. Trump would probably get about a third of the vote and the Republican one fourth. The Dem would, in all likelihood, win just about every other state and the remainder of the popular vote.

Basically this. AOC could be a good Debs analogue, but I don’t see her doing it unless Biden really screws up. I don’t think she’d run against Harris.

I don't think anyone credible will ever run third-party on the left any time soon. Being a spoiler completely destroys their reputations and any shot at a future in politics.

[DaleCooper]

As for the question of this thread, I actually think it would depend on why he wasn't the Republican nominee. As unlikely as it sounds, I'm not ruling out that a new rising star can come out of nowhere, build some national credibility with the base over the next two years while Trump has little public platform, and beat Trump in a primary, if only barely. If that happens then I think you'd see a lot of GOP animosity towards Trump if he tried to run third party and he'd probably only do, at best, as well as Perot in 92 and that's very optimistic for him.

Again, that's very unlikely but I don't think it's impossible.