Third parties, independents see vote totals erode

By most accounts, Americans are tired of the Democratic and Republican parties, and yet: At the ballot box on Nov. 4, Americans cast fewer votes for independent or third-party candidates for senator and governor than in any other midterm election since 1998.

In senatorial and gubernatorial races this year, just over 4% of votes cast went to independent or third-party candidates, down from 5.5% in 2010, 4.6% in 2006 and 4.9% in 2002, according to data compiled by the website Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. Overall, 4.3 million ballots were cast for "off-brand" Senate and governor candidates this year, compared with 7.6 million in 2010.

This even as the center-left think tank Third Way reported in October that between 2008 and 2014, the number of people registering to vote as independents far outstripped new registrants in the Democratic and Republican parties in 10 crucial states. And Gallup polls consistently show more people holding an unfavorable than favorable view of both major parties.

So how is it that with all this dissatisfaction with the two major parties, candidates representing an alternative draw fewer votes than they did four or eight years ago?

Part of it is that states are changing election law to discourage votes for third parties. Richard Winger, editor of Ballot Access News, noted that California changed to a "top-two" primary system wherein only the top two vote-getters in the primaries appear on the Election Day ballot, regardless of their party affiliation. As a result, he notes, in the 2010 gubernatorial race there, 540,000 people cast their votes for independent or third-party candidates. In 2014, "that number was zero."

Washington also now allows for only two candidates on the ballot. Those two states alone made up 12% of the electorate on Nov. 4, Winger said. It is hard to know whether people would actually vote for an independent or third-party candidate, Winger said, because "22% of the voters in 2014 didn't find any such candidate on their ballots."

Comparing voting results across election cycles may not tell you much either, because one or two big-name candidates generate such a large portion of the independent or third-party vote, said Michael McDonald, a political science professor at the University of Florida.

For example, in 2010, Florida's former Republican governor Charlie Crist ran for Senate as an independent and lost — but collected 1.6 million votes in the process. Meanwhile, in Alaska this year, independent candidate Bill Walker took 48% of the vote and was elected governor. But in the tiny electorate of Alaska, that's only 134,000 votes.

Still, McDonald said, there is "a puzzle" for academics as to why major-party registration is dropping but independent votes are not dramatically increasing. One theory, he said, is that many of the people now registering as independents, "are really partisans, and there are really only a very small number who are actually supporting the third party."

It may simply be that parties have obtained such negative connotations that people do not want to admit to being supporters. Sean Trende, senior elections analyst at Real Clear Politics, noted that outsider candidates frequently do better in the pre-election polls than they do at the ballot box.

For example, North Carolina Libertarian Sean Haugh drew an average of 4.9% in major polls, a number that was considered high enough it could prevent GOP challenger Thom Tillis from unseating Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan. In the end, Haugh took only 3.7% and Tillis won with just under a 2% margin of victory.

The third-party vote always drops off from the poll — except when it doesn't, Trende said.

Michelle Diggles, senior political analyst at the center-left think tank Third Way, said part of the dropoff in off-brand votes this year was an overall drop in turnout. "When you don't have a partisan label ... you have less of an incentive to come out to vote, particularly in a midterm election."

For that reason, the overall number of votes for outsider candidates "is less interesting than when we get these big marquee races that draw a lot of attention," Diggles said. She notes that independent Senate candidate Greg Orman appeared to be on track to upset incumbent Republican Sen. Pat Roberts — there was no Democrat on the ballot — and in the end he collected 360,000 votes, though Roberts tallied nearly 100,000 more.

And Trende agrees that an outsider candidate is more likely to run for senator or governor than for the U.S. House. "It's not that people don't want to vote for independent candidates, it's that quality independent candidates are hard to come by," he said, "In governor and Senate races, you can have a quirky millionaire who decides to put up $2-3 million and become a relevant candidate."