Third Party Watch

Ed Crane was national chairman of the Libertarian Party from 1974 to 1977, and ran its presidential campaign in 1976. A founder of the Cato Institute in 1977 , he has served as its president ever since. Quin Hillyer, Associate Editorial Page Editor of the Baltimore Examiner, has this in-depth profile of Crane. [...]

It happens every election cycle. Some libertarian writes about how the Libertarian Party should be abolished (or at least no longer run candidates). The latest comes from Ilya Somin, who writes:

Libertarians often emphasize that failed enterprises should be liquidated rather than kept going on artificial life support. That enables their resources to be [...]

The Raleigh News & Observer writes a wrapup on the presidential campaign in North Carolina and concludes:

Barr was a spoiler in North Carolina after all.

Though the Libertarian presidential candidate made only token appearances in the state and received a minuscule number of votes in November, he still got more votes than the margin of [...]

Ilya Somin writes at Volokh Conspiracy (ranked 7th in my 2006 list of the top 30 liberty-oriented blogs):
third party politics simply is not an effective way of promoting libertarianism in the “first past the post” American political system. That system makes it almost impossible for a third party to win any important elected offices. And [...]

The Senate Guru blog in The Huffington Post gets some very interesting responses from Georgia Libertarian Allen Buckley.

Buckley got 128,000 votes (3.4% of the total) on Nov. 4 as the Libertarian Party candidate for U.S. Senate. Because he kept the two major-party candidates, Democrat Jim Martin and Republican Saxby Chambliss, from getting more than [...]

Says Jim Tharpe in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Libertarians have never won statewide office in Georgia, but suddenly their votes have become valuable currency in the extended U.S. Senate race between Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss and Democrat Jim Martin.

No sooner had the sun peeked over the horizon on Nov. 5 than Martin and Chambliss — [...]

The following is a statement from Libertarian Party spokesperson Andrew Davis:

November 14, 2008

Contact: Andrew Davis
E-mail: andrew.davis@lp.org
Phone: 202-731-0002

Businessmen are Bad for Capitalism, Says Libertarian Party
CEOs and Government Assistance Stand in the Way of Economic Turnaround

WASHINGTON, D.C. – “CEOs and government ‘altruism’ are standing in the way of effective economic turnaround,” says Libertarian Party spokesperson Andrew [...]

The Washington Post’s Reliable Source blog has some fun with Ralph Nader for suggesting that third-party candidates should be invited to President Obama’s inauguration:

The sometimes cantankerous outsider has sent an open letter to Barack Obama asking that third-party candidates—the Libertarian Party’s Bob Barr, the Constitution Party’s Chuck Baldwin and the Green Party’s Cynthia McKinney—be included [...]

Ballot Access News

From preliminary election returns, it appears that these are the best counties for five particular presidential candidates:

Nader: Morgan County, Tennessee 5.2%
Barr: Esmeralda County, Nevada, 2.7%
Baldwin: Millard County, Utah, 5.6%
McKinney: either St. Bernard or LaFourche Parish, both in Louisiana, each 1.1%
Brian Moore: Essex County, Vermont, 2.1%

Thanks to Jack Ross for doing the laborious job [...]

David Weigel of Reason takes a look at the votes for Bob Barr, Ralph Nader, Chuck Baldwin, and Cynthia McKinney, all of which were disappointing to their backers and in historical context. He then concludes:

So if you add together Paul with the four candidates he gathered at the National Press Club to endorse (and [...]

George Dance reports on Nolan Chart that John Monds, Libertarian Party candidate for Georgia’s Public Service Commission District 1, received 33.3% or 1,056,227 votes to incumbent Republican H. Doug Everett’s 2,114,459 or 66.7%.

Dance adds:

Monds’s 33% finish easily guarantees permanent ballot access for the Libertarian Party of Georgia (LPGA) in the 2010 elections. (By Georgia law, [...]

In three states—Missouri, Indiana, and North Carolina—the victor in the presidential race did not get 50% of the vote. And the vote for third-party candidates conceivably may have altered the outcome.

The problem is trying to determine the mindset of the voters who took the third-party route, an impossible task. Would they have voted [...]

North Carolina’s Libertarian Party has succeeded in its effort to automatically remain on the ballot for the next four years. To do that, either its presidential candidate or gubernatorial candidate had to poll more than 2% of the vote. While Bob Barr’s percentage in North Carolina was only 0.6%, the LP candidate for [...]

With about half of today’s projected 140M votes counted, independent Ralph Nader has about 350K votes and Libertarian Bob Barr has 300K. If this pace holds, Barr would finish with a disappointing 600K (barely over 0.4%), and Nader would get a surprisingly low 700K. Both were polling at 1% on election eve.

Thanks to Bradley Jansen for providing this cheat-sheet service on Nolan Chart. He lists 14 “likely battleground states with information of the main third party candidates on the ballot and their history of support in the state (and how they may affect the electoral outcomes).”

Now if we could get only one of the mainstream [...]

“Freedom is sexy” is the motto of the new website for Libertarian Hotties, created by “Ms. Libby Belle.” She hopes to change the image of libertarians as “young white males with bad haircuts.” She’s got her work cut out for her, but she also has some dynamite ammunition. Click on “Gallery,” guys. [...]

... but it’s as close as we can get until Intrade has more granularity and liquidity in its prediction markets for third-party results. Intrade is giving Libertarian Bob Barr a 28% chance of winning more than 1% of the vote, but only an 8% chance of winning more than 2%. Its numbers for Nader [...]

Is this the way the campaign ends, not with a bang but a whimper? Time magazine thinks so, noting that both Bob Barr and Ralph Nader are polling only around 1% nationally as we hit election day. And Time wonders why this is so:

Given the current political environment, third parties really should have [...]

Ballot Access News

On November 1, a Deseret News/KSL-TV presidential poll was released. It is based on 1,205 voters, sampled between October 24 and October 30. Results: McCain 57%, Obama 32%, Baldwin 2%, Barr 1%, Nader 1%, undecided or refused 7%. Thanks to Frank Fluckiger for this news.

In 2004, the presidential vote in Utah had been: [...]

The Associated Press says Georgia is back in play, and “Libertarian Bob Barr is drawing enough support to have an impact on how Obama and McCain finish there.”

AP’s in-depth report includes this information:

Two polls show a surprisingly tight race. One from Mason-Dixon Polling and Research Inc., sponsored by NBC, shows McCain with a lead of [...]

by Jonathan Cymberknopf
(Libertarian)

What started out as the most promising Third Party campaign in years is turning out to be the most disappointing one in years.

Looking back at the Libertarian convention, the purists of the Libertarian Party did try to warn us, but we did not listen as promises of gold blinded our eyes.

We forgave Bob [...]

Raffi Khatchadourian provides a lengthy profile of Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr in the October 27 issue of The New Yorker. Entitled “The Third Man: Bob Barr’s Libertarian run for the White House,” the article includes reportage on Barr’s relationship with former GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul.

Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader, Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr, and Constitution Party presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin will debate tonight, October 30, in Cleveland, Ohio.

When: Thursday, October 30, at 4:30 p.m. EDT.
Where: The City Club of Cleveland; 850 Euclid Ave, 2nd Floor, Cleveland, OH
Topic: The Economy: “Where do we go from here?”

According to the [...]

Agency France Presse (AFP) takes a look at the campaigns of third-party candidates:

...the libertarian candidate Bob Barr, independent Ralph Nader and, to a lesser extent, Chuck Baldwin’s Constitution Party and Green candidate Cynthia McKinney, could have a significant impact on the hopes of McCain or Obama, who remain locked in tight races in key battleground [...]

Ballot Access News

On October 23, U.S. District Court Judge Janet Hall said that Connecticut need not reprint its ballots to include Bob Barr. The key factor in the decision was the state’s testimony that it would be almost impossible to reprint the ballots. There will be no appeal of the denial of injunctive relief. However, [...]