Third Party Numbers

If you add up all the 3rd party votes it's doesn't make much of a dent in the difference between Obama and McCain.

Nader, who did the best of the 3rd party candidates, has stated that if Obama doesn't follow the strict leftist agenda, he will consider Obama an "Uncle Tom".

Ron Paul, who I guess would be considered the "Mr. Spock" of third party candidates and inspired legions of robo-posters here, on Youtube and God knows where else, came in dead last with less than 20M votes.

In between them is a various assortment of nuts and twigs, none of whom could even manage to inspire ONE yard sign where I live.

About all that can be said about those who voted for this bunch is that there are about a million and a quarter people in this country who should never be allowed to purchase lottery tickets or put money on the ponies on behalf of anyone but themselves.

Bob, if you look at the election results, there are at least 10 more candidates that came in below Paul, including "None of the above." Some people are inspired by the candidate they pick, and if that person isn't one of the 2 chosen candidates of the majority parties, it doesn't make their vote any less valid. Frankly, I'd like to see a truly successful third or fourth party - I usually don't seem to find either mainstream candidate all that satisfying.

Well Bob, it has always been my contention that people should have to take a 20 question Competence Test to find out if they even know what they are doing. Did you know Retarded people can vote, I'm not talking about 5 to l0% minor retardation, but people who are 30 & 40% range , cant read, cant write, dont understand the Issues, but they can go vote..What do you think about that,  and after watching the million of college kids that went to vote makes me wonder if the age to vote should be raised. You may not agree with me on that but my son is l9 years old and not mature enough in my opinion to vote.

bas, you are right about needing a STRONG 3rd Party, A STRONG 3rd party could have made the difference in this election. 

Bas,

I understand. I was just having some fun there.

This time around it didn't make any difference if a number of folks chose to go the third party route, but in the past it has. I don't think you'll find any love lost between a lot of Democrats and Ralph Nader for precisely that reason. Similarly, Ross Perot's name is still mud in a lot of Republican households.

I guess for those apt to go third party, it comes down to voting conscience versus selecting the lesser of two evils. As a voter, I want my vote to actually make as much of a difference as it can. I just can't see throwing it away on a lost cause. Regardless of how distasteful the two viable options may be.

kathy,

Not sure I'm with you on a competency test, but I do think people with limited or impaired mental capacity do need to be protected from being used by organizations employed by any particular candidate or party.

In my state a couple of years back one candidate's organization (now our sitting governor, actually) was discovered to have held "bingo parties" at certain nursing care facilities where the "volunteers" actually helped the residents fill out their absentee ballots after the "party".

Given that the candidate at the time was also the Attorney General for the state, nothing came of the investigations done by local authorities.

I'm not sure the impaired are going to necessarily on their own make or break an election, but most certainly they shouldn't be allowed to fall victim to the type of situation I mentioned above.

Bob - sorry to jump on you - it's hard for me to catch humor over the internet sometimes!

I see what you're saying about throwing your vote away on a lost cause, but I believe that if more people voted "for" a candidate rather than just as a lesser of 2 evils, maybe we would get a broader choice of candidate. Even with Nader and Perot, I think it's ridiculous that people say they cost their party the election. In my view, it just means that they didn't do enough to compel those voters to support them. Hey, it hasn't always been the Democrats and the Republicans in the forms that they are in now. Maybe it's getting to be time to switch up a little...

bob,

F.Y.I. Ron Paul was not a third party candidate. His name happened to have been put on the ballot in two states against his wishes. In fact, he tried to have it taken off. Also you should know bob, that the people that voted for third party candidates were in no way doing so because they thought they would win. They did so because they didn't feel either McCain or Obama addressed the issues with workable solutions. As for why there were no yard signs in your area, you have the media to thank for that. They didn't allow third party candidates to be heard from, so very few people actually knew they were running. All this election tells me is that we have roughly 119 million people in this country that are not capable of independent thought.

Jo in SoCal1:41PMNov 5th 2008

Also you should know bob, that the people that voted for third party candidates were in no way doing so because they thought they would win. They did so because they didn't feel either McCain or Obama addressed the issues with workable solutions.

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Jo,

I completely understand that. And it really didn't make a difference one way or the other this time around. So no harm done from my perspective.

Again, it comes down to what your vote means to you. Is it something you use to make a statement (albeit essentially a silent one)? Is it something you use to assuage your conscience? Or do you vote for one of two candidates who are actually going to win and bite the bullet if necessary?

To be honest, I really like Bob Barr. I'd love to vote for him if I felt he had a chance. He didn't, and there was no way I was throwing away my one opportunity to actually weigh in on one of the two viable candidates to support a guy completely without a shot, regardless of how much I liked him.

It's kind of like you have to make the best of what you're given, or punt. I'm not a punter.

As far as Ron Paul is concerned, I was going by the list at hand. I must admit I find completely ridiculous 20K people who would vote for someone who has attempted to get his name off the ballot.

I agree with Jo. Democrats and Republicans refuse to let any third party candidates participate in debates, and they do everything in their power to keep them off of the ballots. They are well aware of a third party threat if any of them manage to get the word out. I voted for Bob Barr, not because I thought he'd win, but because he was the only one I felt offered real solutions. I refused to vote for Obama or McCain, only because I truly believe that either one at the helm would bring different sets of problems.

>I don't think you'll find any love lost
>between a lot of Democrats and Ralph >Nader for precisely that reason.
>Similarly, Ross Perot's name is still mud
>in a lot of Republican households.

Ah, the old canard about Perot hurting the Republicans. That's why GHWBush's poll numbers never budged above ~43%, or below ~37%, with Perot in, out, or half-in. And why Clinton went from third place with Perot in (May-June), to near 60% with him out (August-September), to barely squeaking by with 47% with him half in (in the end). It's conceivable that Perot "helped" Clinton in a few isolated places. Montana comes to mind, though I think Clinton also promised some Indian tribe there a casino. But overall, there's no way anyone other than Bush lost that election for Bush, or anyone but Clinton won it for Clinton. (This is '92, of course. In '96 Perot was pretty much irrelevant, though he still may have helped keep Clinton under 50%.)

But oh, I forgot: polls are meaningless, and they're all "in the tank" for ... somebody or other. Just like they were this time, when the ones who know something about statistics (fivethirtyeight.com, pollster.com) nailed it within fractions of a percent, and the rest underestimated Obama's margin.

Bas 1:37PM Nov 5th 2008 wrote:

>I see what you're saying about throwing
>your vote away on a lost cause, but I
>believe that if more people voted "for" a
>candidate rather than just as a lesser of
>2 evils, maybe we would get a broader
>choice of candidate.

I suspect that the overwhelming majority of Americans vote "for" a candidate. That doesn't mean they like everything about her, or agree with her about everything. Nobody agrees about everything all the time, especially in a free country. But there really are at least two opposing views on most major issues, and in almost all Presidential, most Senatorial and Gubernatorial, and many House and even some local races, the two major-party candidates differ on an awful lot of them. Are any of them "perfect" for any given voter? Of course not. But that doesn't make any of them the "lesser of two evils," either. It has certainly happened that I didn't like either of the major-party candidates very much. I think there have even been times when I voted for a third-party or "independent" candidate. (I know there was one time when I came close, but pulled back literally at the last minute, inside the voting booth.) But most of the time, I have thought one of them was clearly better than the other, not just "less bad."


Jo in SoCal 1:41PM Nov 5th 2008 wrote:

>All this election tells me is that we
>have roughly 119 million people in this
>country that are not capable of
>independent thought.

Way to insult your fellow citizens. So any time I happen to agree with someone who happens to be a political candidate of a major party, I'm "not capable of independent thought"? What kind of "independent thought" led you to that conclusion?

Most of those 119 million people in this country, and most people in most countries, aren't empty vessels waiting for some party to fill up their brains with ideas. (I'm not sure people are like that even in totalitarian states where The Party *exists* to fill up their brains with ideas, and to force them to follow those ideas. In case you hadn't noticed, there aren't many such Parties, or states, left in the world, and a lot of them died not because of external conquest but because their people finally got rid of them.) Most of us take the time to study issues, or have formed general opinions in the past based on our upbringing, education, and experience. Most of us take the choice of a candidate seriously, and understand that our choice matters. And yes, we understand that sometimes that means compromising and accepting "the best we can get" rather than some unattainable Platonic ideal. But we arrive at such conclusions using just as much "independent thought" as you do in choosing your "independent" candidates.

jwc3 2:03PM Nov 5th 2008 wrote:

>Democrats and Republicans refuse to let
>any third party candidates participate in
>debates, and they do everything in their
>power to keep them off of the ballots.

That's often true, although there are exceptions: from I think it was 1961 through about 1980, the Republican Party in NY state kept the "Liberal Party" *on* the ballot, for the express purpose of splitting the Democratic vote. (Worked a few times, too.) But third parties and "independents" do manage to get on the ballot in most states most of the time, and occasionally even get into some debates. (Not that that always helps -- it's pretty clear that just about every one of his public appearances in '92 hurt Perot. The same is often true of "fringe" candidates within the major parties, this year including Kucinich, Gravel, Tancredo, and yes, Ron Paul.) But still, their effect on the results remains minuscule. The only times third-party candidates have in any sense determined the winner were 1912 (T. Roosevelt) and 2000 (Nader), though at least in the latter case I'd argue that the reasons the race was close enough for Nader (and the Florida shenanigans) to make a difference had less to do with Nader's appeal and more to do with Gore's failings. (I'm not counting the multi-candidate elections of 1824 and 1860, where it's hard to say who the "third," "fourth," etc., candidates were. In 1860, the Republicans were arguably the "third" party, although the "second" (Whigs) were pretty much defunct by then.)
Other third-party candidates who got significant support (and in particular who got or swung any Electoral votes) have tended to suppress the winner's margin rather than to make him lose: Thurmond (and, uh, Henry Wallace) in 1948, George Wallace in 1968, and as noted above, Perot in 1992. Was this lack of success attributable to "suppression" of "independents" by the major parties? Well, of course they didn't help (unless they thought it would help them by hurting the other major party), but I think it's mostly because few people *wanted* the "third" candidates.

Look, this year, all the "independent" candidates had the same access to the same Internet that Barack Obama did. One of them (Paul) even did a pretty good fundraising job with it. But individual people, "voting with their mouseclicks," gave orders of magnitude more money to Obama than to Paul (or any of the others, including the "establishment" candidate of Obama's own party). And they did it because more of them liked Obama, not because of any conspiracy by the major parties or anyone else. Indeed, the Internet probably does make it more likely that *some* "independent" or other will someday make a breakthrough. But I think it will depend less on "suppression" by the major parties than on whether the country faces the kind of crisis that gave rise to our first "third party," and a comparable inability or unwillingness of the established parties to deal with it to anyone's satisfaction. And frankly, I don't see slavery coming back real soon.

I think Bloomberg has the potential to be a strong independent candidate. I'd like to know who YOU think can shake up the 2-party system?

California write in votes for Ron Paul and Chuck Baldwin aren't in that tally yet, though. They were registered for write in votes but the write in votes won't be reported for some time.

It is a shame that the mainstream media once again dismissed the 3rd party candidates such as Ron Paul & lumped them together as the so-called "lunatic fringe".

As long as we still rely on the 2 party oligarchy, maybe those fools who backed Obama or McCain are the REAL lunatic fringe!

Bob,
I agree, I was not expecting the third party to win, I did however did not feel comfortable picking the lesser of the two evils. We must have options for candidates, its just a shame that the options were not clearly represented in the media. During discussions with others, they spoke as if they had to chose between the two and that is simply not the case.

Consider another third party candidate: Hillary Clinton - she received a huge number of write in votes - 30,062 from St. Joe County, Indiana alone. For better or worse, do not count her out and do not discount those voters who were so stubborn as to through write in votes her way regardless of the value in fact.

dr. jay,

I guess I am disappointed in my fellow citizens because I have spent so much time studying these election issues for the last 21 months and what I saw was a majority of the country who didn't even know who was running in the primaries, what the issues were and how they would be impacted by the leader they chose. I know that the media had a lot to do with this by shoving the candidates they chose down the American public's throat, but I feel like it is each individual's duty to go beyond that and research who they are voting for and I don't think most people did that. Everything I heard people saying was a regurgitation of some point they heard a pundit making on tv. And I think the proof of the lack of caring on issues is evident when you see results like Obama getting 95% of the black vote when you know there surely can't be that many blacks that agree with his policies. Same goes for Hillary Clinton. Women overwhelmingly voted for her in the primaries, but why? Did they just love her stance on the issues? Ditto for Mitt Romney who took over 90% of Mormon rich Utah in the primaries. I just don't think the majority of the American people care about substance. I appreciate it if you do and you put the time into it and then came out on whatever side you came out on. I honor that. Certainly I don't expect everyone to agree on every issue or have the same experiences in life that would lead them all to vote for the same candidate. But from where I stand, when a candidate (Ron Paul) has a platform of wanting to do great things for the country like bring the troops home immediately and abolish the IRS so you don't have to pay federal income taxes anymore and this person is not even given the time of day by 97% of Americans, that tells me that people wanted a good story and not necessarily a president that would have been good for America.

But from where I stand, when a candidate (Ron Paul) has a platform of wanting to do great things for the country like bring the troops home immediately and abolish the IRS so you don't have to pay federal income taxes anymore

xx

Ron Paul is regrettably not consistent in his own philosophy and that is his fatal flaw if you take his platform to page two.

He is a 'pure' libertatian, meaning he wants little to no government save market forces. Yet he derided the Bush administration for being 'soft Fascists', a direct quote.

Somehow, the idea that unregulated capitalism created that very 'soft fascism' he claims to hate escaped him.

Sorry, but that makes him a colander helmet guy, not someone who could be taken seriously.

Mokele Mbembe3:21PMNov 5th 2008

I think Bloomberg has the potential to be a strong independent candidate. I'd like to know who YOU think can shake up the 2-party system?

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At this point, no one. Not so much because there's no one out there who would make a better candidate than the one's fronted by the existing two parties.

It's like anything else. Supply and demand. As long as the two parties are providing something most people will vote for, there's no demand for a third party.

Again, go back and look at the total number of people who voted 3rd party. Even with some of the late additions (someone mentioned votes for Hilary or somesuch) it doesn't even approach the difference between the two major candidates. Much less hit a whole number percentage point of the total votes cast.