Down yonder I linked to a page describing various third party candidates in the presidential election. I hadn’t heard of all these folks, but I kept an eye on how they did. Turns out that they made less of an impact (particularly Nader) than many expected.
THE TOP THREE THIRD PARTIES DIDN’T MANAGE TO NET A PERCENTILE OF THE VOTE BETWEEN THEM.
Here’s C-SPAN’s state-by-state breakdown of how they did.
And here’s a Wikipedia summary of the popular vote (click to enlarge):
What I’d really like to see is a breakdown of the 56,964 people in the "Others" category. I heard such a list a number of elections ago, and when you’re getting down to characters like Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse getting a few votes each, you’re in some pretty funny territory. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find such a list for this election. May not have been compiled yet.
Looking at these figures, it’s interesting how poorly Nader did. He had been polling well above the .43% he got. Perhaps in the heat of election day a bunch of Nader supporters decided to flip to Kerry. Or perhaps the GOTV (get out the vote) efforts of Bush and Kerry simply overwhelmed Nader. As it was, he got barely more votes than Badnarik, the Libertarian candidate (who presumably would generally hurt Bush the way Nader would generally hurt Kerry). Nader probably would have done better if he had been on the ballot in more places. Note that he was only on the ballot in 34 states plus DC. This was in significant measure due to the Kerry campaign’s efforts to suppress his efforts to be listed on the ballot.
So, the third parties didn’t make much of an impression this time.
Oh, well, better luck next time, guys!
(Makes me want to hum an old Frank Sinatra song, sung here by DS9’s Vic Fontane [WMP]; Lyrics; BUY JIMMY [Vic Fontane] DARREN’S ALBUM)
