“With two of the most polarizing figures in USA politics as the likely major party nominees, the Libertarian Party has more opportunities than ever before”, Mr. Johnson, who captured the Libertarian nomination in 2012, said in a recent interview with Newsmax’s John Gizzi. Gary Johnson, received 10 percent of the vote vs. “I served five years on the U.S. Holocaust Commission, by appointment of President George W. Bush”, Weld said”.
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To be very clear, Johnson will not be one of those third-party candidates with a sufficient concentration of support to have a chance at breaking into the electoral college and perhaps even throwing the presidential contest into the House of Representatives.
Johnson, who likes to sum up his version of the Libertarian message as simply “fiscally conservative and socially liberal”, also says his New Mexico experience has him prepared, if he wins, for governing as a Libertarian nationally with a possibly hostile Congress.
Typically, third-party candidates lose support as the general election approaches, sometimes dramatically. Bob Barr, the Libertarian nominee in 2008, also polled at 2 percent in the late spring of that year.
“I’m speaking as a (former) border governor of New Mexico”. Considering that Johnson only raised $2 million in 2012, a big infusion of cash into his campaign would certainly make him more visible and potentially competitive in some states. Because of the congruence of small-government rhetoric in both parties, Republicans often assume any Libertarian vote “really belonged” to them and if a Libertarian beats the spread between a winning Democrat and a losing Republican, the Libertarians will be accused of “spoiling” it for the GOP.
“It reminds me of Anne Frank hiding in her attic waiting for the Nazi sirens to pass by and evokes the memory – not the memory, I was not alive, but the notion of Kristallnacht”, he said. But this election is different.
What usually happens with 3rd party candidates is that they poll well in the spring and the summer, and then fade away to nothing in the fall.
There’s a guy who’s “having a good day” and emerging with surprising poll numbers against Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, but he’s someone FiveThirtyEight says is easy to confuse with “that plumber who fixed your running toilet last month or your spouse’s weird friend from work who keeps calling the landline.” Who?
Johnson received less than 1% of the vote in 2012, but he got 1.2 million votes – a Libertarian party record.
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“This convention is going to be huge”, said Libertarian National Chair Nicholas Sarwark, adding that it is expected to be the party’s largest in almost 40 years. He is vying for the nomination against two lesser known candidates – radio talker and activist Austin Peterson and former fugitive John McAfee.
