Topic: Election 2008
Third Party movement is alive and well The Presidential election results is but one indicator on the status of the Third Party movement.by Jonathan Cymberknopf
(libertarian)
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Shepard Smith epitomized the media when he interviewed Ralph Nader at around 1:00 am, after Obama gave his acceptance speech. Shepard Smith from Fox News insulted a great American by literally calling Mr. Ralph Nader irrelevant to his face several times. He accused Ralph Nader and his supporters of being "reduced to irrelevant".
You got to love the media, first they ignore and black out Third Party candidates such as Ralph Nader prior to the election, and then a simpleton invites him for a 1 minute segment after the election results are in just to insult him.
So let's analyze some of the election results from the point of view of the Third Party Vote.
In 2004, Independent Candidate, Ralph Nader earned .38% of the total vote with 463,655 votes and in 2008, Ralph Nader has earned 738,771 votes which equals to .56% of the total vote.
In 2004, Libertarian Party Candidate, Michael Badnarik earned .32% of the total vote with 397,265 votes and in 2008, Libertarian Candidate Bob Barr earned 523,686 votes which equals to .40% of the total vote.
In 2004, Constitution Party candidate, Michael Peroutka earned .12% of the total vote with 143,630 votes and in 2008, Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin earned 199,057 votes which equals to .15% of the total vote.
In 2004, Green Party candidate David Cobb earned .10% of the total vote with 119,859 votes and in 2008, Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney earned 161,694 votes which equals to .12% of the total vote.
These were the 4 top minor candidates that were on enough ballots to potentially win the Presidency by electoral map. In all four cases, they increased their vote count from the 2004 election.
It is worth noting that the Constitution Party Candidate, Chuck Baldwin broke the record for most votes for a Constitution Party presidential campaign. This can be most certainly attributed to Ron Paul's endorsement. The previous record was Howard Phillips’ 1996 campaign in which he received 184,820 votes.
Also worth mentioning, Bob Barr is just the second Libertarian candidate for President to receive more than 500,000 votes.
And Ralph Nader had his second best showing running for President out of his 4 runs dating back to 1996.
As far as the rest of the minor candidates are concerned, they follow this trend of exceeding vote totals from the 2004 election cycle. Notable examples are Charles Jay who in 2004 earned 946 votes but in 2008 earned 2,422 votes. We also saw 2 new candidates in 2008 with name recognition that saw their names pushed on some ballots, such as Ron Paul earning 40,454 votes and Alan Keyes earning 47,836 votes.
It is true that given the enormous voter turnout, logic would dictate that the raw numbers should of course be higher for the Third Party candidates as well, so you then have to look at the percentage of the total vote for each Third Party candidate in 2008 as compared to the percentage of the total vote for each Third Party candidate in 2004 election cycle. As you can see from the above 4 Top minor candidates, in all four cases, these percentages did increase, even if it was ever so slightly.
Perhaps, the most interesting phenomenon worth examining is the dramatic increase in write-in votes that occurred in this 2008 election as 227,616 write-in votes were actually counted and tabulated which represented .17% of the total vote. In 2004, only 36,585 write-in votes were registered representing only .03% of the total vote.
Just as there is a host of economic indicators such as Gross Domestic Product, unemployment rate, new home sales, to name just a few, which shows us a picture of our economic health or allows analysis of such, so there are indicators to measure the Third Party movement.
One of the indicators of measuring progress on the movement of Third Parties in America is the presidential election results as indicated above. This is probably the most popular indicator because it is the simplest, but it does not necessarily show you the full picture as there are many other indicators including, but not limited to Party membership, Party growth, fundraising, media exposure and success at the local level.
For example, in my own state of Florida, I know of many Libertarian candidates that won election in the November 4th 2008 election. Tray Lunquist was running for West Volusia Hospital Authority Group A Seat 1 in Florida and won with 59% of the vote with 42,892 votes. Jeff Hunt who was running for Duval County Soil & water Board Group 2 in Florida and won with 51.4% of the vote with 148,515 votes. Bruce Reichert was running for Collier County Soil & Water Board Seat 1 in Florida and won. J. Adam Mitchell was running for Collier County Soil and Water Board Seat 4 in Florida and won. Howard Horowitz was running for Palm Beach Soil & Water Conservation Group 4 in Florida and won. Jack Tanner was running for Lee County Soil and Water Conservation District Seat 4 in Florida and won. Another great example is Cara Jennings, a Green Party member, who won re-election to Lake Worth City Commission Seat 2, District 2 in Palm Beach County Florida.
It is my contention that the Third party movement is alive and well in America.
Let Freedom Grow!
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Posted By: Andrew Peters
Date: 2008-11-05 19:20:23
You didn't mention in your report, that Ralph Nader had just labelled Barack Obama an Uncle Tom on Fox News. The great work, 'Unsafe At Any Speed' - a one time paragon of consumer safety will now be relegated to nothingness under the shadow of what he labelled Barack Obama on the very night the first African American man won the country's highest office. If you're going to do a full report - you should at least mention what Mr. Nader said.
Thank you very much for posting the current vote tally's for the third party candidates. I myself voted for Chuck Baldwin and am proud to say so! I did NOT waste my vote because i voted my conscience! It's just a shame that even though we still live in an era of Liberal controlled media that will only allow us to see and hear what they want, we also now live in the 'Internet' era which allows millions of americans to "educate" themselves on who and what is out there in the form of election options. Imagine!!! If Mr. Baldwin or Mr. Nader or Mr. Barr could spend the same amount of money on their campaigns as the 'Big two' do then maybe...just maybe....some year in the not too distant future...we might actually have TRUE change in the form of a completely new president! Unfortunately though we still live in an opressed and censored america where ALL the presidential candidates are NOT invited to the debates as in the old days, where they are only given little IF ANY airtime in this country on t.v., the "Big Two" parties continuosly file injunctions to stop third party candidates from even getting on state ballots, and, most of all, americans are simply too lazy to do even a little of the work on their own, so they sit back with the evening news and let a 15 second soundbite or a 1 minute "paid for by that candidate" commercial full of lies dictate who they'll vote for. Without any kind of research i'm willing to bet that probably 90% of the people who voted in this country know nothing or little about either of the major candidates and nothing at all about the minor ones. Yes...it is truly a shame that in 2008 America with the internet so close to millions of fingertips we still live in one of the laziest countries on Earth when it comes to shutting our mouths...opening our eyes...and looking up the facts!
Here's a question for anyone to answer: For those of us who voted for Chuck Baldwin and the Constitution Party, what do we call orselves? i.e.: Constitutionalists? or is that too long? We could shorten it a bit...like...Cons? nope bad move there. How about 'Tutionalists'? yeah..too yuppy i know.
Posted By: Angry as He..
Date: 2008-11-05 23:31:59
I got to this page by an email from this writer. In this email, he sent this article to hundreds of people and made all their email addresses visible because he put them in the TO field of the email. The last time he did this, I got a mailbox filled with people discussing something and hitting "reply all" every time they did.
Dude, learn to respect people. That is not cool at all. You just gave out my email address to everyone on your list and vice versa. Learn what the BCC function is for on an email.
The last time you did this, one of your lovely "friends" decided to sell my address to a few hundred websites and I have been overwhelmed with spam ever since. I can't thank you enough for all the time I am now losing due to your thoughtlessness.
Not only have you ticked me off, but I will now block all emails from you as I am sure most of the others on the list did as well. Plus, from what I can see, some of those are business addresses. Do you have so little respect for people with real jobs that you think they should have to spend time out of their work day for your nonsense? One email is acceptable, but this way they are bombarded by your selfishness. Do you think the folks at MSNBC are really interested in your little article? Do you think they want to hear all your friends discuss it?
I voted for Chuck Baldwin by write-in ballot and cannot find the vote totals he received in New York, not even on the Internet. If anyone knows his New York total I would be curious to know.
Jonathan, your article is ridiculous. If you want a measure of overall health of the third party movement, you can simply compare the results to 2004. You have to reach further back and get a meaningful trendline. If you compare 2000 to 2008, you'll see Nader got 2.8 million votes in 2000 but only 650k this year. If I apply your flawed logic to this new set of datapoints, I would draw the conclusion that the third party movement is dying a quick death.
You are most certaintly right in your assertion that we would have to go further back if we wish to get a broader picture and a more accurate trend. But you can't pick and choose as you did because I can do that as well.
For example if we go back to the 2000 election as you did in your comment, The LIbertarian Party which is a great case example in this matter being that it is the Biggest Third Party in America, recieved 384,516 votes with a great Libertarian running by the name of Harry Browne which translated to .36% of the total vote.
So the trend in the increase in votes is there for the Libertarian Party since 2000.
We would have to do this for all third party candidates and ofcourse study each anomaly in depth such as the Ross Perot run and yes Ralph Nader in 2000.
But as I exposed in my article, I think a better picture is looking at the amount of candidates running for local and state office and ofcourse at the amount of candidates that actually win.
Posted By: ralph swanson
Date: 2008-11-06 10:19:59
The Florida Libertarians are highly 'radical' and lead the USA, growing from 5 to about 45 people in office after third partiy equal treatment got passed here, with a wealth of coalitions and achievements.
Unlike the national LP, they see their mission as empowering the citizen, not just getting elected, and so emphasize advisory and local office, outreach, coalitions, and getting things done in statewide initiatives so the citizen decides. More important, they have political independents running and getting elected to put Libertarian ideas in action.
Cara got elected as an anarchist by the way. So much for anarchism not selling. It sells when you have reasonable proposals and d legwork, which a lot of candidates don't do.
Posted By: Scott Redding
Date: 2008-11-06 10:56:47
When a 3rd party comes along that is able to attract 5% of the vote nationally, every 2 years for Congress, every 4 years for Presidential races, you could say that the US is no longer a two-party system. It looked to be developing that way (Nader and his 2000 results), but the states where Nader had 5% or better of the vote didn't translate into strong Congressional results om 2002. And the 2004 and 2008 elections have been Biblical disasters for 3rd parties. McKinney was lucky to get 0.5% in most of her states. 3rd parties, whether they are Libertarian, Constitution, Green or Nader, need to work between the elections to make sure they do well. Otherwise, they just show up every 4 years and say a little prayer, and hope for the best. If Nader wants to do well in 2012, he needs to start now. If the Greens want to do well in 2012, they need to start now. Nominate a candidate now, and have them campaign in 10 states for 4 years!
The reason why I cherry-picked data was to demonstrate why you shouln't cherry pick data, which you did in the article.
The Libertarian party peaked in 1980 when it got 1.06% of the vote with a bit over 900,000 votes total. Since then it has fluctuated between 200,000-750,000 votes. It is a fringe party with no signs of becoming accepted by the mainstream.
Posted By: Jonathon the Whig
Date: 2008-11-07 10:21:53
There's no silver lining on this trend. Third parties are loosing their relevance more and more. Perot, 96, Nadar 00.. those were major third party runs. (I don't count Perot 92 as he didn't have a party structure yet, behind him).
As long as third parties continue to run wackos and washed out politicos, they'll have no relevance. As long as third parties stand for nothing more than fringe issues, they'll reach fringe voters and nothing more.
The LP staked their soul on Bob Barr. Despite that he didn't really show all that better than Badnarik, and if you take into account the greater number of voters, he did worse. That's the last hurrah for LP ever experiencing growth.
Baldwin couldn't do much better than Peroutka. He couldn't win conservative votes away from McCain or the recliner. If the Constitution Party can't win the religious right it seemingly has no function and will go more hard-line theocratic.
The Greens nominated a nut. They're still experiencing Nadar Seperation Anxiety, I suppose.
If you want to see a real political party move out of obscurity and into true political contention keep watching the Modern Whig Party.
Please elaborate more on the equal treatment for third party's you mentioned that was passed in Florida. Sounds like something that should be on a national level.
I agree with what you are saying to a point. I don't think 3rd party is dying but in your own way you are pointing out one of the main issues of the Libertarian Party. In my opinion the biggest problem with the Libertarian Party is that it's disorganized. Libertarians stand on principles that I believe many people are for. We can blame the mainstream media for not covering Libertarian candidates and principles in the way we would like to see but I think the reason why we see this is because the party is disorganized. There are other parties like the AIP and the Constitutional Party that are seemingly flavors of Libertarian thought. I do not know all the reasons why these other parties exist but perhaps it is because there is something wrong with the Libertarian Party as an organization.
You said that in 2000 Ralph Nader got 2.8 million votes. I may be mistaken but I think this year all third party candidates combined did not receive 2.8 million votes on Tuesday. I understand the author of the article is making the argument that Presidential election results are not the only indicator but it is a strong indicator and making arguments based on a few tenths of percentage reports is not going to excite people. Considering the popularity of Ron Paul it appears to me that many people who were excited about Ron Paul ended up voting for Senator McCain or Senator Obama. Sure, it is their right to do so if that is there desire but a vote for these two candidates in my opinion is a vote against the principles that these supposed Ron Paul supporters were excited about last year and earlier this year.
The Libertarian is not only disorganized, but it is suicidal. The beltway libs, Cato and Reason did all they could to get the most libertarian candidate out of the race so they could hang on to statist interventionist policies. This party is a frayed mess of what it once was.
I am a libertarian and was for years but I have left the party because as so many have said, the party left me.
And no, as Cullen wrote, Jonathan, you can't just pick one outlying years and then use that to compare to. That is called JUNK science where you manipulate data to get the results you want. It makes this article weak and shows that the article does not have much value. You are acting like the MSM you hate so much. Ignore truth, and print whatever version of reality you want.
Indeed, I would go so far as to call this article disinformation and don't we have enough of that already. You do us all a disservice by painting a rosy picture on a pig. Third parties are in huge trouble. If we don't know that we can't do anything about it.
This article is a disgrace. Please do better next time.
Posted By: Jake, the champion of the constitution
Date: 2008-11-08 19:49:39
I was not impressed nor surprised with the third party performance in this election either.
Many voters stayed at home due to apathy or Lew Rockwell-thinking (both of which I have no problem with, people can do as they wish) and Obamamania may have sucked in at lot of the anti-Bush, anti-Establishment vote, which I predict will prove quite ironic. Third party supporters/members and libertarians should circle the wagons around www.campaignforliberty.com
We all have a lot of teaching to do, I wrote about this awhile ago, and my thoughts havent changed too much
George - great question. How about the New Jeffersonians? Sound money, nonintervention, founding father reference to the Republic, innovative, ability to show love regard of skin color :) maybe not a good idea - The Washingtonians? Lexington & Concord? Yorktown? Liberty and Gold? Thomas Paine? The New Republicans? Ron Paul republicans? Maybe we need to hire an advertising agency lol
I would very much like to see the Libertarian Party overthrow the Republicans. To do that, we must persuade Ron Paul to return to it, for he will never do much good in the Republican Party. And how did Ralph Nader get so many votes?! I thought his running for President yet again this year was total nonsense!
I think the two main parties, in cahoots with corporations, which own the MSM, are doing a more effective job of keeping 3rd parties out of serious consideration. They are doing this early in the process before any momentum can build.
In the case of Ron Paul (Republican) the MSM marginalized him, kookified him and/ or ignored him. As all here know, even his own party disowned him.
I think the two parties have gotten to the point in the country, where far too many people are dependent on the present government, and will not consider risking any real change.
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