"third" parties
I was just pulling together some information on minor parties in presidential elections since 1976.
These parties have gotten less than 2% of the popular votes in 2/3 of the elections. The vote in these years has generally run about 1%, more or less.
The exceptions are the years in which John Anderson and Ross Perot were candidates, and 2000. Nader was a candidate in several years. His vote in 2000 was considerably less than those of Anderson in 1980 and of Perot.
The point? Will 2016 be one of those exceptional years? I'm going to need to think more about that, but anyway, here are the data:
year minor party percentage
2012 0.014509082
2008 0.01238851
2004 0.009208922
2000 0.035335209
1996 0.097563464
1992 0.193371292
1988 0.007104611
1984 0.00247247
1980 0.079666348
1976 0.013534075
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