Third Party Watch

Wally Edge, writing in Politicker.com, notes that recent Nevada races have been very close and “third party candidates drew many times the margin of victory and potentially had a significant impact on the outcome.”

Ralph Nader recently filed in Nevada, but Edge doesn’t believe he will have a major impact:

Running as the Green party candidate in 2000, Nader garnered 15,008 votes—representing about 2.5% of the vote total—but less than George W. Bush’s 3.5 percent margin of victory over Vice President Al Gore. Despite an even closer race in 2004 in which Bush defeated U.S. Sen. John Kerry (D-Ill.) by 2.6%, the 4,838 votes cast for Nader represented just 0.6% of the vote—and one fourth of his impact from the prior election.

Edge has a different opinion about the possible impact of Bob Barr’s candidacy:

Although Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik attracted even fewer votes than Nader in 2004, circumstances are very different this year. The Libertarian party is running a prominent conservative, former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), and his running mate is Las Vegas native and TV celebrity Wayne Allyn Root. Especially in Nevada, it’s possible that U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has more to worry about from third party candidates than his opponent.

This entry was posted by TPW News Items on Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 at 7:20 am and is filed under Opinion, Campaign 2008, Libertarian Party, Ralph Nader, Presidential Race, Bob Barr. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.