Perot got 19 percent of the national vote in 1992, and not a single electoral vote. Strom Thurmond got 2 percent of the popular vote in 1948, but because it was regionally concentrated, he won 39 electoral votes. We elect our presidents through a mechanism - the Electoral College - that ensures that even a nationally popular party or figure can wind up with no voice whatsoever. The fundamental hurdle to third parties here, rather, are structural. From the ability of billionaires to give themselves unlimited aid to the flood of dark, beige, and “clean” money empowered by Citizens United to the power of the Internet, finances no longer stand in the way of a mass movement getting its voice heard. The other obstacle - money - is essentially yesterday’s news. The “butterfly” ballot may jog a memory or two…) (In fact, it became so easy for minor party candidates to get on the Florida ballot that in 2000, a Palm Beach County election official came up with a new design to make sure the names on the ballot were readable. Then, after Perot’s lawyers entered the fray, the obstacles were essentially cleared away. Ballot access laws used to make third parties battle Parris Island obstacle courses. They endure even though two of the principal obstacles to competing parties have been essentially removed. (The socialist party won less than 2 percent of the vote.) Yet here in the United States, whose founders deplored the idea of political “factions,” the two-party system endures with the same two parties that have existed since the 19th century. In France, Emmanuel Macron’s party did not exist a decade ago, while the two dominant French parties of the previous era are now pathetic shadows of their old selves. A century ago, Britain’s Labour Party replaced the Liberal Party as one of the two dominant parties, and newer entries like the Scottish National Party hold significant power. No other free nation has stuck so firmly to its dominant two parties than the United States. In 1912, even Theodore Roosevelt - one of the most popular presidents ever to hold the office - could not sustain a functioning Progressive Party to reclaim the White House or remain a significant power player. They were by turns regional and national, ideological- and process-driven, rooted in broad disaffection and the appeal of charismatic candidates, but none came close to setting down roots in the American political system that would nurture a long-term political movement, let alone propel someone to victory. What’s notable is how varied the source of these independent campaigns were, and how common the end result. Sometimes a third party’s impact can be enormous if exit polls were right, Ralph Nader voters in 2000 would have split heavily for Al Gore, netting him more than enough votes to win Florida and the White House. Bob LaFollette was winning his home state of Wisconsin, along with 16.6 percent of the national popular vote. While Calvin Coolidge was gliding to a landslide in 1924, progressive Sen. In 19, two segregationists - South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond and Alabama Governor George Wallace - won enough electoral votes to threaten a deadlocked Electoral College but both came up short. A decade earlier, in the late spring of 1980, Republican-turned-independent John Anderson was essentially even with President Jimmy Carter and Governor Ronald Reagan, before winding up with 7 percent of the vote. Thirty years ago, a quirky character out of Texas with a million quips and several billion dollars actually won 19 percent of the vote in a general election until Ross Perot’s sudden and temporary departure from the race, he was running competitively with President George Bush and Governor Bill Clinton.
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