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Third parties in the United States are secondary political parties that participate in national and state elections. Historically, America has a two-party system. Some have suggested the Electoral College with its "winner take all" award of electors in Presidential elections has, over time, created the two-party system. Another contributing factor is the division of the government into three separate branches which differs from the parliamentary system.

Although third parties rarely win elections, they play an important role in democratic government. Third parties draw attention to issues that may be ignored by the majority parties. If the issue finds resonance with the voter, one or more of the major parties may adopt the issue into its own party platform. Also a third party may be used by the voter to cast a protest vote as if in a referendum on an important issue. Third parties also helps voter turnout by bringing more people to the polls.

Third parties in past presidential elections

1832

The Anti-Masonic Party, seeking the eradication of the Free Masons and other secret societies from the United States, nominates former U.S. Attorney General William Wirt for President. Wirt, a former mason, garnered only seven electoral college votes from the state of Vermont, coming in third to President Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay.

1892

James Baird Weaver runs as presidential candidate for the Populist Party. The Populist Party garners 22 electoral votes and 8.6 percent of the popular vote. The Democratic Party, despite losing the election, adopts many Populist Party positions after this election, making this contest a prominent example of a delayed vote for change.

1912

Republican Theodore Roosevelt runs as the Bull-Moose Party (Progressive Party) nominee in the 1912 election and garners more votes than Republican incumbent William Howard Taft, who becomes the first (and to date, only) incumbent President seeking reelection to finish third. (Former Presidents Martin Van Buren and Millard Fillmore both finished third in the 19th century, but neither was the incumbent President at the time.) The split in the Republican vote propels Democrat Woodrow Wilson to victory with 42% of the popular vote, but 435 electoral votes. Socialist Party candidate Eugene Debs receives 6% of the vote.

1924

Erstwhile Republican Robert M. La Follette runs as a Progressive. He captures 17 percent of the popular vote and wins his home state of Wisconsin.

1948

Strom Thurmond runs on the segregationist Dixiecrat Party ticket in the 1948 election, splitting the Democratic vote and winning 39 votes in the electoral college from Southern states. Former Vice President and Cabinet Member Henry Wallace also challenges for Democratic votes by running for the Progressive Party and receiving 2.4% of the popular vote, though no votes in the electoral college. Despite both challenges Democratic incumbent Truman still defeated Republican Dewey in what was widely regarded at the time as an upset.

1968

George Wallace of the American Independent Party runs in the 1968 election. Wallace captures 13% of the popular vote, receiving 46 electoral votes in the South as well as many votes in the North. Republican Richard Nixon wins the election with 43% of the popular vote and 301 electoral votes.

1972

Republican Roger MacBride casts his electoral vote for John Hospers and Toni Nathan of the newly formed Libertarian Party. This is the first electoral vote received by a woman. John G. Schmitz, the American Independent Party candidate claims 1.5% of the vote, or 1.1 million votes.

1976

Eugene McCarthy wins 740,460 votes for President as an independent candidate.

1980

Congressman John B. Anderson captures 5,719,850 votes or nearly 7% of the vote as an independent candidate for President. Libertarian candidate Ed Clark wins 921,128 votes, or 1% of the total.

1992

Ross Perot, an independent, wins almost 19% of the popular vote (though no electoral votes), possibly helping Democrat Bill Clinton to win the Presidential election with only a 43% plurality of votes.

1988

Dr. Lenora Fulani became the first woman and the first African American to gain access to the ballot in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. She also qualified for federal primary matching funds.

1996

Ross Perot ran for president again, this time as the candidate of the newly formed Reform Party. He received 8% of the popular vote.

2000

In the 2000 Presidential election, George W. Bush wins the deciding state of Florida by fewer than 600 votes. Some Democrats accuse Green Party candidate Ralph Nader of having cost them the election, and in discussion of strategies for the U.S. presidential election, 2004 both parties weigh the costs to the Democrats of another Nader presidential run.

Winner-take-all vs. proportional representation

In winner-take-all (or plurality-take-all), the candidate with the largest number of votes wins, even if the margin of victory is extremely narrow or the proportion of votes received is not a majority. Unlike in proportional representation, runners-up do not gain any representation in a first-past-the-post system.

American legislators have traditionally had wide discretion to vote as they or their constituents please. A Democrat representing a rural area can be pro-life and anti-gun control; a Republican representing a suburban district can be pro-choice and pro-environment. Thus, even though there are only two parties represented in most American legislatures, there are different of shades of opinion.

In America, if an interest group is at odds with its traditional party, it has the option of running sympathetic candidates in primaries. If the candidate fails in the primary and believes he has a chance to win in the general election he may form or join a third party.

Other obstacles to success by Third Parties in the U.S.

Aside from the mechanics of winner-take-all, the Electoral College, and the use of primaries, third parties are hampered by restrictive ballot access laws that force them to spend the bulk of their resources just to get on the ballot. Such obstacles include the requirement in several states that third party candidates obtain thousands of signatures of registered voters in order to get their candidates listed on the ballot. If they manage to get on the ballot, third party candidates are often not allowed. Socialist Party leader Morris Hillquist said in 1910 that America's presidential system has a role in hurting third party chances even further down the ticket.

In the United States the ticket handed to the voter contains the names not only of candidates for state legislature or congress, but also for all local and state officers and even for President of the United States. And since the new party rarely seems to have the chance or prospect of electing its candidate for governor of a state or president of the country, the voter is inclined in advance to consider its entire ticket as hopeless. The fear of 'throwing away' the vote is thus a peculiar product of American politics, and it requires a voter of exceptional strength of conviction to overcome." (Ibid 202)

Because of the difficulties third parties face in gaining any representation, third parties tend to exist to promote a specific issue or personality, often an issue which either or both of the major parties may eventually end up co-opting. As a counterexample, H. Ross Perot eventually founded a third party, the Reform Party, but he apparently intended it to exist solely as a vehicle to support himself and his agenda and never intended it to field any Congressional or Governatorial candidates. In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt made a spirited run for the presidency on the Progressive Party ticket, but he never made any efforts to help Progressive congressional candidates in 1914, and in 1916 he supported the Republicans. The next third party candidate to win a major portion of the popular vote was independent Ross Perot, who won 18.87% of the popular vote in the 1992 Presidential election.

There have been few third party governors in the past few decades. The last was Jesse Ventura, a member of the Reform Party and later the Minnesota Independence Party, who governed Minnesota from 1999-2003.

One way in which third parties can influence elections in certain jurisdictions in the United States (notably New York state) is through electoral fusion.

Third Parties as tools of major parties

A growing trend in US elections is for a major party and its supporters to help a third party with the idea of taking votes that would otherwise be likely to go to the other major party's candidates. This is the classic "divide and conquer" tactic. The idea is that if a third political party normally pulls far more voters from one major party than the other, the other major party can benefit by the third party doing well in the election. Currently in the US, the Green Party is viewed as pulling more from the Democratic Party than the Republican Party, and the Libertarian Party is viewed as taking more votes from the Republican Party than the Democratic Party.

Advocates of third parties generally object to the notion that votes are "taken away" by third parties, because the phrase "taken away" misleadingly suggests that the two major parties have a propriety ownership interest in voters' votes. See the discussion below, concerning "wasted" votes.

In 1992, some political observers attributed the "success" of Ross Perot and his Reform Party for Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton's defeat of incumbent Republican President George Herbert Walker Bush. In 2000, the victory of Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush over incumbent Democratic Vice President Al Gore for the US Presidency was widely attributed to the "success" of Ralph Nader, running on the Green Party's ticket.

In 2004, fearful of Nader's potential as a so-called "spoiler" who might garner votes that would perhaps otherwise go to the Democratic ticket, Democratic Party operatives made a concerted effort in many states to keep Ralph Nader off the ballot and were successful in several states. Even where they did not succeed in keeping Nader off the ballot, Democratic operatives working to keep Nader off the ballot often succeeded in draining resources from the Nader campaign, which had to struggle against the Democrats' legal challenges and other anti-Nader tactics. By the same token, it was reported that in certain states Republican backers helped get Ralph Nader on the ballot in 2004. Nader ran in 2004 as an independent candidate and sought to stress his independence from any political party, although he accepted the nomination of the Reform Party (and this nomination gave him ballot access in several states, including Florida); in some states where ballot access for an independent presidential candidate was more difficult than forming a new political party, Nader's 2004 campaign formed the "Populist Party" in order to get his name on the ballot.

Some political analysts believe that the tactic of a major party supporting a third party might be a cost-effective one in that the party seeking to benefit from this tactic would have a far more difficult and expensive task trying to pull voters favoring the other major party, to their own candidate, than attracting those voters to a third party candidate. For example, people who vote for Green Party candidates are viewed as generally being more left than the Democratic Party. If this is true, then those who might vote for a Green Party candidate would likely never vote for a Republican candidate no matter how much money the Republican candidate spent courting them. However, if supporters of a Republican candidate were to donate to the Green Party candidate, the Green Party candidate might attract voters who might otherwise vote for the Democratic candidate, thus weakening the Democratic candidate in the final election and thereby improving the chances of the Republican candidate to win the election. Conversely, supporters of a Democratic candidate might assist a Libertarian Party candidate to defeat a Republican Party candidate. It should be noted that the theoretical scenario involving Republican Party campaign contributions to a Green Party candidate is largely counterfactual, as Green Party candidates tend to reject funding they view as contrary to their principles or values. Thus, most Green Party candidates and most Green Party organizations in the United States refuse to accept funding from corporations or political action committees, etc.

Another way major parties can use third parties to their advantage is by helping a third party candidate run against the opposing incumbent party's candidate when that incumbent doesn't have a candidate from the other major party running against them in election, for example, a Green Party or Libertarian Party candidate running against an otherwise unopposed Democratic Party incumbent or a Libertarian Party or Green Party candidate running against an otherwise unopposed Republican Party incumbent. The most common reason why a major party doesn't run a candidate against the other party's incumbent is because the major party believes there's no chance one of their candidates can defeat the incumbent, or because no one files in the other major party's primary since the consensus is that the party will spend no resources, or almost no resources, against an entrenched incumbent who is nearly certain to win. The out-of-power (for that office) major party then doesn't run a challenger to not waste resources and personnel on an election they cannot win as well as prevent their party from publicly losing to the other major party. The reason for helping such a third party candidate in such an election is to force the incumbent candidate to run at least some measure of a campaign thus tying up volunteers that might go to help another candidate run for office from that same incumbent party as well as getting the incumbent to raise campaign money thus taking donations for their campaign that might have gone to another candidate of that same incumbent party. In the military, this tactic is called "tying up reinforcements" or "diverting reinforcements".Ğ

Whether Third Party voting is a wasted vote

The most common argument against voting for a third party candidate has been that one's vote is "wasted" in that one's vote for a losing candidate won't count for anything, whereas the same vote cast instead for a candidate who is the "lesser of two evils" and who has a chance of winning might help that candidate win the election. In 2000 and 2004, Democratic supporters commonly told potential voters for Ralph Nader that a vote for Ralph Nader was a vote for Republican George W. Bush.

There is a great deal of debate whether voters who didn't vote for a third party candidate would have then voted for a major party candidate. It might be just as likely that the voter would not have voted at all if there had not been a third party candidate to vote for. Saying it is true, in this instance, such a vote could be viewed as wasted.

It is, however, false in that the more votes a third party receives, the more attention incumbent parties pay to the campaign issues being advocated by that third party. In 1992, Ross Perot's main "gripe" (as he said) was the growing national debt and the budget deficit. After 1992, many political analysts say both incumbent parties paid special attention to this issue and the result was the temporary reduction in and then elimination of deficit spending and actual reductions in the national debt for a brief period. Such a vote for a third party is then viewed as an indictment of both incumbent parties that neither is doing a good job on certain issue(s) to the point where voters reject both and vote for a third party candidate. Given this, a vote for a third party can be viewed as a delayed vote for change, not affecting the immediate outcome of the current election but affecting the incumbent parties after that election as they try to address the reason why voters voted for a third party in the last election, attempting to garner the supporters of third party voters who see this issues being addressed in an attempt to influence these voters to return to or join the major party that did address those issues in the next election. A prominent historical example is the presidential election of 1892, during which the Populist Party (otherwise known as the People's Party) achieved massive success by U.S. third party standards, picking up 22 electoral votes and 8.6 percent of the popular vote. After the 1892 election the Democratic Party adopted many of the Populist Party's positions, so many in fact, that the Populist Party nominated the same candidate as the Democrats in the 1896 presidential election (essentially marking the end of the Populists as a separate party). The Populist Party was able to do this using the process of electoral fusion. In 1992, Ross Perot campaigned telling his supporters to "send a message" to the incumbent parties about the national debt and budget deficit, which apparently was heeded, at least temporarily. If the case for the "delayed vote" can be made to the public by third parties, third parties might be able to change their "spoiler of elections" image to a "force for change" image.

Finally, voters in a "safe state" for either major party are unlikely to influence that state's electoral vote. These voters, if they choose to vote for a third party, will be drawing attention to that party, while if they vote for the major party they most closely agree with, they will not change the national contest. A preferential voting or instant run-off voting system could allow for more people to vote for a third party.

Notable Third Party Presidential Candidates

Notable 2006 Third Party/Independent Candidates

Current Largest U.S. Third Parties

Conservative

Liberal

Various other minor parties are given in the list of political parties in the United States.

Resources

  • The Importance of Ballot Access, by Richard Winger http://www.ballot-access.org/winger/iba.html

External links

* Minor Political Party Links - List of and links to every minor political party in the US. Including the Independence Party, the Birthday Party, and every other political party that has ever even remotely surfaced.

Politics

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Third party (United States)".

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