Third party (United States)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Third parties in the United States are political parties other than the two major parties that participate in national and state elections, although there may actually be more than 3 parties. Historically, America has a two-party system. Following Duverger's law, 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 do not help voter turnout bringing more people to the polls.
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[edit] Third parties in past presidential elections
[edit] 1832
The Anti-Masonic Party, seeking the eradication of the Freemasons and other secret societies from the United States, nominated former U.S. Attorney General William Wirt for President. Wirt, a former Mason, received seven U.S. electoral college votes from the state of Vermont, coming in third to President Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay.
[edit] 1848
The Free Soil Party, a precursor of the Republicans, nominated former President Martin Van Buren as its presidential candidate, splitting the vote in New York, and causing the election of Zachary Taylor.
[edit] 1856
With the Whig party disintegrating, their candidate, former President Millard Filmore, who also had the nomination of the Know Nothing Party, came in third behind Democrat James Buchanan and John C. Fremont of the newly formed Republican party. It is not certain which of Buchanan's opponents was the actual third party candidate.
[edit] 1860
During the 1850s the two-party system broke down and there were four major candidates, including the breakaway Southern Democratic Party, which nominated Vice President John C. Breckenridge as its candidate, and the Constitutional Union Party, which nominated John Bell. Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected with only 39% of the vote, and wasn't even on the ballot in many states.
[edit] 1892
James Baird Weaver ran as presidential candidate for the Populist Party. The Populist Party won 22 electoral votes and 8.6 percent of the popular vote. The Democratic Party eventually adopted many Populist Party positions after this election, making this contest a prominent example of a delayed vote for change.
[edit] 1912
Republican Theodore Roosevelt ran as the Bull-Moose Party (Progressive Party) nominee in the 1912 election and won more votes than Republican incumbent William Howard Taft, who became 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 gave Democrat Woodrow Wilson victory with 42% of the popular vote, but 435 electoral votes. Socialist Party candidate Eugene Debs won 6% of the vote.
[edit] 1920
Eugene Debs, imprisoned in 1919 for violating the Espionage Act of 1917, won nearly 900,000 votes for President.
[edit] 1924
Erstwhile Republican Robert M. La Follette ran as a Progressive. He received 17 percent of the popular vote and won his home state of Wisconsin.
[edit] 1948
Strom Thurmond ran 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 sought Democratic votes by running for the Progressive Party and receiving 2.4% of the popular vote, but 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.
[edit] 1968
Former Democratic Governor of Alabama George Wallace of the American Independent Party ran in the 1968 election. Wallace won 13% of the popular vote, receiving 46 electoral votes in the South and many votes in the North. Republican Richard Nixon won the election with 43% of the popular vote and 301 electoral votes.
[edit] 1972
Republican Roger MacBride cast 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 won 1.5% of the vote, or 1.1 million votes.
[edit] 1976
Eugene McCarthy won 740,460 votes for President as an independent candidate.
[edit] 1980
Congressman John B. Anderson won 5,719,850 votes, nearly 7% of the vote, as an independent candidate for President. Libertarian candidate Ed Clark won 921,128 votes, or 1% of the total.
[edit] 1992
Ross Perot, an independent, won almost 19% of the popular vote (but no electoral votes).
[edit] 1996
Ross Perot ran for president again, this time as the candidate of the newly formed Reform Party. He won 8% of the popular vote.
[edit] 2000
In the 2000 Presidential election, George W. Bush won the deciding state of Florida by fewer than 600 votes. Some Democrats accused 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 weighed the costs to the Democrats of another Nader presidential run.
[edit] 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. In the United States, systems of proportional representation are uncommon, especially above the local level, and are entirely absent at the national level.
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 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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.
Some third party advocates object to the notion that third parties "take votes away" from major parties, on the grounds that the major parties were never entitled to anyone's vote to begin with. (See the discussion below, concerning "wasted" votes.)
In 1992 some political observers attributed Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton's defeat of incumbent Republican President George Herbert Walker Bush to Ross Perot's good showing. Others cite evidence that Clinton would still have won in a direct race with 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 good showing of Ralph Nader, running on the Green Party ticket.
In 2004, both parties showed strategic interest in Ralph Nader's presidential campaign. Concerned that Nader might "spoil" the election for their candidate John Kerry (by attracting votes that would otherwise go to Kerry), the Democratic Party tried to deny Nader ballot access in many states, with considerable success. Even where the party failed to keep Nader off the ballot, the Nader campaign had to devote resources to ensuring ballot access. It was also reported that the Republican party assisted Nader's efforts to get on the ballot.
Nader's 2004 run was as an independent candidate; he generally emphasized his independence from any political party. He did, however, accept the nomination of the Reform Party in several states to gain ballot access. In other states, where the laws made forming a new party easier than qualifying as an independent candidate, Nader's campaign revived the Populist Party in order to assure ballot access.
[edit] 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.
Typically, 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.
[edit] Notable Third Party Presidential Candidates
- James B. Weaver - He ran as the Populist candidate for US President in the 1892 elections, receiving over a million votes and 22 electoral votes.
- Eugene V. Debs - Ran for US President as the Social Democratic Party candidate in the 1900 election, and the Socialist Party candidate in the 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920 elections.
- Theodore Roosevelt - Ran as Bull Moose Candidate in 1912 and won 88 electoral votes.
- Robert M. La Follette, Sr. - Running in the 1924 US Presidential election, "Fighting Bob" LaFollette won almost five million votes, 16.6% of the popular vote, and 13 electoral votes from his home state of Wisconsin.
- John B. Anderson - Ran as an independent candidate in 1980 after dropping out of the Republican Primaries. He won 6.6% of the popular votes.
- Ross Perot - Running for President in the 1992 elections, Ross Perot won nearly 20 million votes - 18.9% of the popular vote. He ran again in 1996, winning just over 8 million votes.
- Ralph Nader - His first major presidential campaign was the 2000 US election when as a Green, he won nearly 3 million votes. He is often credited with being the defining factor in the final results of the 2000 elections. He also ran as a Green in the 1996 election and as an independent in the 2004 election.
[edit] Notable 2006 Third Party/Independent Candidates
- Carole Keeton Strayhorn- Texas State Comptroller and ex-Republican. Originally intended to challenge Governor Rick Perry in the primary but has instead decided to run as an Independent. Most polls showed her as second behind the governor through much of the election campaign [1], but she came fifth in the election, behind Perry (who retained the governorship), Democrat Chris Bell, Libertarian James Werner, and fellow independent Kinky Friedman. See Texas gubernatorial election, 2006.
- Russ Diamond- A business owner and founder of PACleanSweep, an organization created to protest The Pennsylvania General Assembly's pay raise. He is a candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania
- Bernie Sanders- Independent democratic socialist holds one of Vermont's U.S. Senate seats,
- Joe Lieberman- Connecticut for Lieberman. Caucused with Democrats once reelected.
- Gail Parker Independent Greens of Virginia 2006 U.S. Senate candidate. Retired U.S. Air Force officer 2008 Presidential candidate (source www.VoteJoinRun.US
[edit] Current Largest U.S. Third Parties
[edit] Conservative
- Constitution Party - Socially conservative, economically libertarian.
[edit] Moderate
[edit] Liberal
- Green Party
- Vermont Progressive Party - Progressive party that enjoys modest success on the local (mainly in Burlington) and state levels
- Working Families Party - a "satellite" party of the Democrats in New York, where candidates can get a second ballot line.
[edit] Libertarian
- Libertarian Party - Identifies as fiscally conservative and socially liberal.
[edit] Puerto Rican Independence Movement
[edit] Other Minor Third Parties
- Various other minor parties are given in the list of political parties in the United States.
[edit] Resources
- The Importance of Ballot Access, by Richard Winger http://www.ballot-access.org/winger/iba.html
[edit] External links
- LocalParty.Org - LocalParty.Org California
- Third Party Watch - Frequently updated source for third party news.
- ThirdPartyNews.net - News & Information relating to American third party politics
- http://freedomkeys.com/3rdpartyessays1.htm 3rd Party Essays
- Opinionated history of USA third parties at the Center for Range Voting
- 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.
- Why Third Parties? - An About.com resource on basic info on third parties
