Third Party Candidates by SoupCatcher

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Third Party Candidates

POSTED BY: SOUPCATCHER
UPDATED: Wednesday, December 22, 2004 17:42
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Tuesday, December 21, 2004 9:56 PM

So I'm sure the last thing most people want to talk about is the election that we just had here in the US. And it would not surprise me if this thread dies a very quick death. That said, I've been playing with numbers now that the states have certified the election and one thing that jumped out at me was how poorly third party candidates fared. So I decided to do some comparisons with previous elections. To make a long story short, I looked at the support that third party candidates received for the last nine elections and got really depressed. Here's the results for the states that comprise the Pacific region of the census:

As someone who believes that we need more viable third party candidates to help this country realize its full potential, this graph is very depressing. We're definitely at a low point and it looks like the excitement that Perot, mainly, and Nader, slightly, generated has waned. I don't know if it's just a product of this particular election or if this will carry through to the next election, but it's not a good time for variety.

Just thought I'd share.

* editted to add a brief note on methodology. I looked at the total number of ballots that were cast in each election, the number of votes that the Democrat and Republican candidates received, and the sum of the votes that the official third party candidates received. That's why the numbers don't add up to 100% - there are write in votes (except in Hawaii) and blank ballots included in the ballot totals. For the 1972-1992 California elections I used ballot total estimates from the Field Research Corporation. The vote totals are from either the Secretary of State or Lieutenant Governer web sites (depending on who is in charge of elections for that particular state) or Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections (Dave has numbers for more elections. I checked his accuracy for elections where there was overlap and his accuracy is excellent).

Alaska: http://www.gov.state.ak.us/ltgov/elections/
California: http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/elections.htm
Hawaii: http://hawaii.gov/elections/
Oregon: http://www.sos.state.or.us/elections/elechp.htm
Washington: http://www.secstate.wa.gov/elections/
Field Poll: http://field.com/fieldpollonline/subscribers/
Dave Leip's Atlas: http://www.uselectionatlas.org/

There are three kinds of people: fighters, lovers, and screamers.

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Wednesday, December 22, 2004 6:00 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up

Probably has a bunch to do with the "Don't waste your vote" (i.e. Don't let Bush win) propaganda we've been beat with over the past couple of elections. Also, the third parties nowadays don't have as much money to spend on campaigning as H. Ross did in '92 and '96, or Nader and the Greens in 2000.

I'm afraid with the "vote against" track that the past two elections have followed, we're back to a strict two-party system. And neither one are people I'm all that much in agreement with.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Wednesday, December 22, 2004 6:16 AM

EMBERS

thank you for posting this,
I'm surprised that 2000 wasn't higher for 3rd party
because I thought that that was a big year

I am a big believer in the importance of 3rd parties
because the 'two parties' are so busy trying to appeal to EVERYONE
that they exclude huge portions of society,
3rd parties remind politicians that other people exist

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Wednesday, December 22, 2004 5:42 PM

SGTGUMP

Well, I'm still going to vote Libertarian.

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