Third-party candidates in U.S. presidential elections typically face very long odds in large part because of the difficulty of getting exposure to the voting public.
Gary Johnson, this year’s Libertarian Party candidate for president, is on the cusp of a big breakthrough. Johnson, former governor of New Mexico, currently holds 13% of the national vote in polls, according to a recent CNN/ORC survey. If he can boost that number to 15%, he will become the first third-party candidate allowed to participate in the presidential debates.
Businessman Ross Perot took part in the presidential debates in the 1992 election, but he ran as an independent candidate with no party affiliation. He landed about 19% of the national vote, making him the most successful outside party performer since Theodore Roosevelt.
This election cycle, low approval ratings for both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have helped Johnson experience a mini surge in popularity as voters look for alternatives. Johnson has had just under 9 percent of the national vote since late June, with Clinton at 40 percent and Trump 37 percent. But Johnson’s numbers soared to 13 percent this week, just as the GOP convention was being held.
Johnson’s stances are fairly typical Libertarian positions: He wants to abolish the I.R.S., scale down the military and legalize weed, among other things. The biggest hurdle for Johnson, a two-term governor who has run 75 triathlons and climbed Mt. Everest, remains a lack of name recognition. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that of likely voters, only 23 percent are “somewhat familiar” with him.
