Did third-party candidates Jill Stein and Gary Johnson lose Clinton the election?

The election was close, but there are several snags in the ‘third-party votes did it’ claim – not least the assumption that Clinton was a clear second choiceTwo results from the US presidential election seem hard to reconcile. Donald Trump won the presidency after gaining what seems likely to be 306 of the 538 electoral college votes available. Hillary Clinton looks set to win the popular vote by a fraction of a percentage point.
That difference is because of the way that votes