Third Parties

Abstract

Presidential elections in the United States were not always or only held between Democrats and Republicans. A number of minor parties and independent presidential campaigns have influenced American presi- dential elections. Indeed, the Republican Party was an outsider itself at one time. The Republican Party replaced the Whig Party as the sec- ond major party in 1854. That replacement has not been repeated, and the same two major parties have dominated presidential elections since then. The smaller parties have nevertheless remained important. In the twentieth century, minor political parties and independent presidential candidates had an impact on which major party candidate was elected and had occasional influence on public policy. In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party helped to weaken the Republican can- didate, William Howard Taft, and elect Woodrow Wilson. There are those who maintain that at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the candidacy of Ralph Nader in 2000, who also ran in 2004 and 2008, contributed to the controversial defeat of Al Gore.1 In 1992, the quixotic billionaire Ross Perot garnered 19 percent of the vote, a his- torically significant accomplishment for an independent candidate. It is disputed whether Perot contributed to the election of Bill Clinton in 1992, but there is no dispute that Perot’s candidacy focused the attention ofboth major political parties on the annual budget deficit and the national debt of the United States.KeywordsPresidential ElectionRepublican PartyMajor PartyGreen PartyParty CandidateThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.