Third party (U.S. politics)
Third parties are most often encountered in presidential nominations and while third-party candidates rarely win elections, they can have an effect on them through vote splitting and other impacts.
The Socialist Party elected hundreds of local officials in 169 cities in 33 states by 1912, including Milwaukee, Wisconsin; New Haven, Connecticut; Reading, Pennsylvania; and Schenectady, New York.
After losing a Republican primary in 2010, Bill Walker of Alaska won a single term in 2013 as an independent by joining forces with the Democratic nominee.
John Tyler was elected on the Whig ticket in 1840 with William Henry Harrison, but was expelled by his own party.
Johnson was the running mate for Abraham Lincoln, who was reelected on the National Union ticket in 1864; it was a temporary name for the Republican Party.
This method is designed to allow voters to express their support for multiple candidates, while both using a simple ballot format and being easy to count.
The concept of approval voting has been discussed and analyzed by social choice theorists and mathematicians, and compared to other electoral systems.
Theoretical analyses have shown that approval voting can lead to more satisfactory outcomes in certain scenarios, but its effectiveness can vary depending on the electoral context and voter behavior.
PR systems provide balanced representation to different factions, usually defined by parties, reflecting how votes were cast.
Small districts with few seats in each that allow localised representation reduce proportionality in STV or list PR systems.
In the United States, systems of proportional representation are uncommon, especially above the local level and are entirely absent at the national level (even though states like Maine have introduced systems like ranked-choice voting, which ensures that the voice of third party voters is heard in case none of the candidates receives a majority of preferences).
In the United States, if an interest group is at odds with its traditional party, it has the option of running sympathetic candidates in primaries.
Micah Sifry argues that despite years of discontentment with the two major parties in the United States, third parties should try to arise organically at the local level in places where ranked-choice voting and other more democratic systems can build momentum, rather than starting with the presidency, a proposition incredibly unlikely to succeed.
[39][40][41] Nationally, ballot access laws require candidates to pay registration fees and provide signatures if a party has not garnered a certain percentage of votes in previous elections.
[42] In recent presidential elections, Ross Perot appeared on all 50 state ballots as an independent in 1992 and the candidate of the Reform Party in 1996.
Patrick Buchanan appeared on all 50 state ballots in the 2000 election, largely on the basis of Perot's performance as the Reform Party's candidate four years prior.
Debates in other state and federal elections often exclude independent and third-party candidates, and the Supreme Court has upheld this practice in several cases.
A third-party candidate will sometimes strike a chord with a section of voters in a particular election, bringing an issue to national prominence and amount a significant proportion of the popular vote.
For example, in the US 2000 Presidential election Magee predicts that Gore shifted his positions to the left to account for Nader, which lost him some valuable centrist voters to Bush.
This section includes parties that primarily advocate for granting special privileges or consideration to members of a certain race, ethnic group, religion etc.
In 2023 and 2024, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. initially polled higher than any third-party presidential candidate since Ross Perot[57] in the 1992 and 1996 elections.
[58][59][60] As Democrat Joe Biden withdrew from the race and the election grew closer, his poll numbers and notoriety would drop drastically.
