The Roots of Third Party Voting

Abstract

By many accounts, Ralph Nader had a substantial effect on the dynamics of the 2000 presidential campaign. While Nader’s place in history is unique due to his impact on the election’s outcome, Nader’s campaign follows in a long tradition of significant third party candidacies in the twentieth century. We explore the 2000 Nader campaign with the goal of placing its appeals - as well as its effect on voters - within this broader context of recent third party candidacies for the presidency. Based on the nature of his issue appeals, we can characterize the Nader campaign as a blend of left-wing populism and anti-system sentiment. Noting the similarity of this appeal with those of other significant third party candidates (excepting Wallace in 1968), we go on to look at the electoral impact of Nader and these other candidates. Our analysis of state-wide voting patterns yields surprisingly large correlations between the Nader vote and votes for recent third party campaigns that were ideologically different from the Green Party campaign. Moving to individual-level analysis, we find that third party voting is driven largely by alienation from the major parties and the political system as well as identification with third parties. As a result, we find that Democrats in 2000 were unlikely to defect from Al Gore, suggesting that people who did vote for Nader did so because of their repulsion from the major parties or attraction to Nader and/or the Green Party.