Democrat or Republican. Conservative or Liberal. Red or Blue. Such designations have long divided frustrated Americans, placing them on one side of America’s two party system. However, through rising polarity and increasingly unpopular mainstream candidates, another option has re-emerged: the third party candidate vote.
Whether it is Ralph Nader, Gary Johnson, or Robert F Kennedy, as American politics have grown more and more divisive, the popularity of third party candidates has steadily risen. Are they still highly unlikely to win a major election? Yes. But third party options possess a dangerous new power, and ithey have the potential to tip elections and shape the future of American government.
Many Americans are under the impression that the emergence of third party candidates was fairly recent, but in actuality, their history spans as far back as our country’s founding. Though their influence and effect had changed alongside history, their presence on the ballot has never wavered. In fact, the first game changing third party candidate of the 20th century was none other than Theodore Roosevelt.
What made Roosevelt’s third party challenge unique was that he had already served as president under the banner of one of the country’s mainstream parties. As a Republican president, he championed Westward Expansion, land conservation, and the Panama Canal. After his term ended, Roosevelt encouraged his friend William Howard Taft to run for the presidency. Taft won, but Roosevelt was dissatisfied with his policies and attempted to challenge him for the Republican nomination in the next election.
After losing the Republican nomination, Roosevelt chose to run for office as a third party candidate instead, founding the Progressive (Bull Moose) Party. While he was dismissed as a nothing candidate, Roosevelt actually garnered a significant amount of Republican support and fell just short of a re-ascension to the presidency.
The next critical third party candidate was George Wallace, a fierce segregationist and states rights advocate from Alabama who entered the 1968 presidential election as a candidate for the American Independent Party. Wallace derived most of his support base from the South, and actually won five states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi, representing the Southern push against civil rights at the time.
Almost thirty years later, populist and self made billionaire Ross Perot made history as the first third party candidate to collect almost 20% of the popular vote in a general election. Perot outspent both of the other two candidates, Democrat Bill Clinton and Republican George H.W Bush, and became the first third party candidate to participate in the televised debates. While Perot ended up not winning a single electoral vote, he presented how popular third party candidates could become when faced with unpopular mainstream party options.
Yet, it was Ralph Nader, the Green Party candidate in 2000, who firmly displayed how third party candidates could tip the balance of an election one way or another. Although Nader never had a chance at winning the general election, when the vote between Al Gore and George W. Bush came down to the swing state of Florida. Nader siphoned enough votes away from Gore so Bush could snatch the state, and hence the presidency, with a narrow 537 vote margin.
Leading up to the 2010s, third party candidates continued to play a role in elections, but not enough to dominate news headlines or garner significant electoral support.
That all changed with the 2016 election, where, together, candidates other than Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton received an astounding 7.8 million votes combined. The same two alternative candidates, Jill Stein and Gary Johnson, were on the ballot four years earlier, and together received less than two million votes.
Yet stale candidates and a dissatisfied middle class pushed many former Democrats to vote independent, ultimately taking the election away from Clinton, who was heavily favored, and subsequently placing it into Trump’s hands.
On the contrary, the 2020 presidential election was much more of a two-man race. There was a large push to defeat Donald Trump, whose distasteful actions while in office made many Americans eager to vote him out. Many of those who voted for third party candidates in 2016 abstained in 2020 as a method to ascend Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, into office.
Now, in 2024, the election is almost guaranteed to be Trump versus Biden once again. But unlike in 2020, there is now a real appetite for third party candidates due to a shared dissatisfaction with both dominant parties.
There are three prominent leaders running as third party candidates in this year’s election.
First is Jill Stein, leader of the Green Party, and the Green Party’s candidate in both 2012 and 2016 as well. During a video announcing her campaign, she advocated for an “economic bill of rights” that would guarantee access to food, employment, healthcare and housing. She also expressed strong support for combating climate change head-on and an end to America’s militaristic foreign policy strategy.
Next is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., nephew of former president John F. Kennedy Jr., a retired environmental lawyer, and a prominent anti-vaccine advocate. He has historically promoted debunked claims that link vaccines to autism and has rallied against the COVID-19 vaccine. Were he to become president, RFK Jr. has said that he wants to end America’s proxy wars, paramilitaries, and its culture of warfare.
The last third party candidate running is Cornel West, a progressive activist and professor who is running under the banner of the People’s Party. West has taught at various prestigious universities, including Harvard, Yale and Princeton, and he is known for his sharp criticism of former President Obama. He is running on a platform centering around drastically cutting the military budget, combating climate change and passing Medicare for All.
November 2024 is almost guaranteed to be an unprecedented election for third party candidates. Both Trump and Biden are deeply unpopular; polls by FiveThirtyEight indicate that only 4 in 10 Americans like either mainstream option, leaving an open space for a third party candidate to dominate a large percentage of the vote.
Currently, a combination of third party candidates total as much as 17% of the vote, more than any election since Ross Perot in the 1990s. Not to mention, the independent group New Labels is also considering putting forth a candidate, which could only further impact the 2024 field.
Admittedly, this year’s election will be tumultuous regardless of third party candidate involvement. But in a race that is as tight as 2024 will inevitably be, a strong alternative contender could be just the thing to push the pendulum one way or another and redefine American democracy for decades to come.
Third party options possess a dangerous new power, and they have the potential to tip elections and shape the future of American government.