More than that. Protest voting only works if you're vote is important to them. If you aren't a representative part of a large group of reliable voters or donors. THEY DON'T REALLY CARE ABOUT YOUR VOTE. If courting you would help their margin of victory. But might alienate other more reliable voters or donors. THEY DON'T REALLY CARE ABOUT YOUR VOTE. If they don't really care about your vote. Then they don't really care about your protest. Then your protest is pointless and counterproductive.

As cruel and heartless as it sounds. Resources and bandwidth are always limited. They have to put their attention and efforts where they think they will get the best payout. Trying to please a broad swath of fickle unreliable left-leaning voters generally falls outside of the good uses of those limited resources.

Literally our passive leftist protest voting is meaningless to them. Even if they lose. Meaningless to them. They will spend millions of dollars analyzing trying to figure out why otherwise reliable group didn't vote for them. If they hear that they didn't get leftist vote, they won't bat an eye.

If we want their attention. If we want their concern. We need to ingratiate ourselves. And make ourselves indisposable to them. We need some primary them. We need to replace them with ourselves. Then they will pay attention. Then they will care. Before we do any of that though. Protest voting and putting the car before the horse and completely useless.