Third Parties

Both the Libertarians and the Greens had a good year thanks to the unlikeable candidates presented by the two major parties.  The Libertarians (I am a registered Libertarian) had their best showing ever.  Established in 1971, it saw its best showing ever by far this year.  It broke a million voters in 2012 but received more than 4 million this year, attracting 3.3% of the voters.  The Greens had their best showing since 2000 when Ralph Nader sank Al Gore.  Jill Stein received 1.25 million votes, less than half of what Nader pulled in 2000 but vastly better than it has done in the intervening years.  One wonders how the party would have done if Bernie had accepted Dr. Stein's offer to lead the ticket.

 

Despite what seemed like an ideal year for third parties, this was only a slightly more active year for them.  Ross Perot's 1992 run was the largest third party run in the last 50 years.  Though 18.9% of the voters supported him, he acquired not a single electoral vote.  George Wallace's American Party, which championed segregation, received 13.5% of all votes cast and 46 electoral votes!  Perot's 1996 run for the newly-formed Reform Party was a shade of his 1992 run but still attracted 8.4% of the voters.  John Anderson's 1980 run was favored by 6.6% of the voters.  Thus, 2016 comes in 5th place for Third Party voting when looking at elections in my lifetime.

 

 

Knowing the Republicans penchant for betraying their voters, it is possible the Libertarian Party will continue this growth spurt come 2020.

 

 

Given how the Democrats have demonstrated that they will rig the primaries for their chosen candidate, the Greens might see improved performance as well.

 

Some say that a third party vote is a wasted vote.  After all, one of the two main parties is going to win.  Yes, I'm sure the Whigs thought the Republican upstarts would never amount to anything.  The important thing to note is that the two main parties will pay more attention to the concerns of third parties as they lose votes to them.  If all the Green voters had gone for Hillary in Wisconsin, she would have taken the state.  The next Democrat will make note of that and the Green agenda may find its way into the Democratic platform.  On the other side, if Trump had taken half of the Libertarians in Minnesota, he could have won the state with a comfortable margin.

 

Third party voters lose every election but influence parties to address their issues and perhaps acquire their votes next time.  It is often said that independent voters decide the race and who is more independent than a third party voter?