The many Americans who dream of the day when voters in this country will have more authentic, viable, winnable Presidential candidate choices than the two major political parties offer still have a lot of groundwork to do, according to a new Gallup poll. There’s little support for third parties this year, even as polls show disillusionment over how both parties have fared:
U.S. registered voters show limited support for third-party candidates this year, with the vast majority preferring Barack Obama or Mitt Romney. A June 7-10 Gallup poll asked a special presidential preference question, listing three third-party candidates in addition to Obama and Romney. Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson is the choice of 3% of registered voters and Green Party candidate Jill Stein the choice of 1%. Another 2% volunteer Ron Paul’s name and 1% mention someone other than the listed candidates.
And a comparison:
Prominent third-party candidates have tended to receive significantly higher support in polls taken earlier in election years than they wind up getting on Election Day. This is based on a comparison of registered voter preferences in June with the final election vote share in years when higher-profile third-party candidates were included in Gallup’s presidential preference questions. In general, the candidates wound up getting a fraction of their June estimated support — in most cases, less than half.
The drop in support during the campaign is likely due to two factors. First, historically, third-party candidates’ support typically drops as the campaign approaches Election Day, perhaps because voters realize the candidates have little chance to win. Second, generally speaking, support for third-party candidates tends to be higher in the broader pool of registered voters than in the smaller group of actual voters.Lower-profile third-party candidates also tend to receive higher support in preference polls when included in the list of candidates than they receive in the actual vote. Gallup has asked the vote-choice question that includes minor-party candidates in each election year since 1996, including in the fall, when Gallup begins measuring likely voters’ preferences. In every instance, the available registered and likely voter estimates exceeded the actual percentage of the vote the candidate received in the election.
What does this mean?
Third-Party Vote Likely Helps Obama
With Gallup’s daily horse-race ballot generally showing a competitive race between Romney and Obama — the two are tied at 46% of the vote among registered voters since Gallup began its tracking program in April — it is interesting to note that much of the third-party vote seems to be coming at Romney’s expense. Romney’s 40% share of the registered voter total in this ballot format in the June 7-10 survey is significantly below his average in tracking to date, while Obama’s 47% vote share is more in line with his typical performance.
This is not unexpected in a year in which an incumbent president is running, when voters’ decisions center largely on the president’s performance and whether he deserves a second term, as opposed to choosing from a set of candidates they prefer to be president.
Implications
With no high-profile third-party candidate entering the presidential race thus far, the third-party vote for president is likely to be limited this year. At most, 5% to 7% of U.S. registered voters currently say they would vote for someone other than Obama or Romney. However, as the historical data suggest, that percentage is likely an upper limit, given the drop in support for third-party candidates over the course of the campaign and the tendency for polls to overestimate such candidates’ support when they are included in presidential preference questions.
It is not out of the question that a third-party candidate could do well enough in a particular closely contested state to tip the balance to either Romney or Obama. However, it does not appear at this point as if any of the current third-party candidates are likely to be a factor in the race on a national basis.
The American political system is rigged in favor of the two parties. For a viable third party to emerge, the concept has to go beyond the conceptual and needs to be spearheaded by a charismatic, mainstream-oriented figure who can also garner (or who has) the money needed to mount such a difficult campaign, plus the political smarts to oversee and assemble a strong political organization that can at least acceptably compete with the big, entrenched political parties. Ross Perot gave — for a while, at least — a taste of how this is within the realm of possibility.
Until then, voters tired of the predictable polemics of partisans, the double standards and hypocrisy of the parties, and the institutional gridlock will have to hold their noses and vote for less smelly of two choices, or cast a vote for a party that even Polyanna would say is going to lose.
UPDATE: The Politico wonders if libertarian candidate Gary Johnson can make a difference in the election.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.