What third party candidates? There is no third party candidate, and if there were, this wouldn’t have any impact on them. Gerrymandering has nothing to do with 3rd party candidates. And it doesn’t “strengthen the two-party status quo.”
Gerrymandering is not about protecting incumbents, it’s about allocating votes in a way that benefits one party over another. It’s actually one of the more common ways that incumbents are finally defeated- redistricting happens and the new lines change the demographic makeup of their district and they lose.
