Fusion is when two or more parties nominate the same candidate for the same office.
All votes for that candidate count towards the candidate s total, regardless of which party generated them. Fusion is a powerful tool for minor parties for two reasons. First, the major parties are strongly inclined to choose candidates that are acceptable to the minor parties, even if those minor parties can only bring them a few percent of the votes. Those few percent can often mean the difference between winning and losing the election. Minor parties can therefore exert a strong influence on the candidate selection of the major parties, and thus on the eventual makeup of the government.