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Almost half the American public is now open to voting for independent and third-party candidates, according to the new NBC/WSJ poll (PDF). This is not too surprising an outcome, given the extremely low current opinion of the two main political parties.
According to the poll, 46 percent of those surveyed are enthusiastic or comfortable voting for a candidate who is independent and is not affiliated with either political party, while only 23 percent have reservations or would be uncomfortable with it. Those are very good numbers. People are also significantly more at ease with voting for an independent candidate than for one endorsed by Barack Obama (36-43) or Sarah Palin (25-52). At the moment, there’s no strong inherent stigma to running as an independent.
The bigger news for potential third-party and independent candidates is that a quarter of people say they are more likely to make such a choice this year for Congress.
If the choice in your district had the following, would you be more likely to vote for a–(ROTATE:)
Republican candidate for Congress, a Democratic candidate for Congress–or an independent or third party candidate for Congress?Republican candidate …………………………………………… 31
Democratic candidate …………………………………………… 34
Independent/third party candidate ………………………….. 25
Not sure ……………………………………………………………… 10
That is potentially fertile territory for independent candidates. Of course, the problem is that the 25 percent could potentially be split equally among ultra-conservative voters unhappy with Republicans, ultra-progressives unhappy with Democrats and moderate voters unhappy with both parties. If that 25 percent splinters, it would be impossible to line up that vote behind a single candidate.
Despite the improved environment for independents and third parties, I doubt we will see many win the elections in November. The two major parties have huge built-in advantages, and they have crafted our election laws to reinforce them. As long as we have first-past-the-post and single-member districts, instead of instant-runoff voting or proportional representation, overcoming the spoiler-effect issue is a huge hurdle to creating viable non-major candidates.
The few candidates who will benefit from this pro-independent environment already have high name recognition and have established themselves as serious politicians. This poll is good news for two prominent former Republicans running statewide as independents: Charlie Crist for US Senator in Florida, and Lincoln Chafee for Governor in Rhode Island.
31 Comments
Garth?
Handle with care:
Newly independent…
Newly divorced…
Newly jobless…
Newly released from prison…
Newly off those calming meds
I always made a point when I lived in NY state of voting for whichever candidate that showed on say the Liberal Party line rather than the Democratic party line.
And since I’m in Florida, I’m not real sure that any of the candidates for senate or governor are worth the vote.
Corrupt bidnessmen, corrupt Rs and Ds. Just basically a whole host of corruption and clueless wanting my vote.
Party unity my ass!
: )
Sounds a lot like what we have here in TX, but on top of everything else, we have a part-time government (meets only every other year for about 3 months). Money and corporate interests RULE Texas.
“The two major parties have huge built-in advantages, and they have crafted our election laws to reinforce them.”; and MOST U.S. citizens are UNAWARE of how the deck is stacked.
When talking about 3rd party candidates, I never can figure out where along the political spectrum one should fit. And who will give up the voters.
Do we need a party for the Tea Party crowd? That would move the repubs to the left by subtracting the right side. Similiarly if there arises a real progressive party on the left.
Maybe we should have six or eight parties and form temporary coalitions on an issue-by-issue basis.
Unfortunately, as long as elections in the US are based on winner takes all, having multiple parties really doesn’t do much to make things better.
yep the first past the post election system is stupid and restricts Democracy. Sadly were are one of the only places to still use it.
Canada has the same single member plurality election system we have and it has multiple parties, including the New Democratic Party. In my opinion, a legitimate left third party would have influence in the US if it A) only ran candidates for Congress, not the presidency (at least initially) and B) only ran in places with a substantial progressive population: the West Coast, the Northeast, and cities like Chicago, St. Paul, Denver/ Boulder, etc. After all, it is the NDP and Tommy Douglas that brought Canada single payer, and they are concentrated in the progressive areas of Canada, the plains provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
i’m writing in jane hamsher
Actually, no, Canada does not have a system like the US has. It has a Parliament, like Great Britain. In a Parliamentary system, multiple parties are represented.
In a Parliamentary system, the multiple parties do have a level of power not available currently in the US system.
the spoiler effect is a non issue with the legacy parties so ideologically indistinguishable in terms of their actions in power.
of course they maintain some differentiation in their marketing and campaign rhetoric, but how is that Hope-n-Change working out for those of you who believed the hype?
some retain their emotional attachment to the Blue Donkey, much like some folks will root for their home team no matter what. but that is faith and emotion determining political choices, rather than the elemental simplicity of voting only for candidates who actually share your principles and values.
I disagree with many of the conclusion you have drawn from this poll.
One, it is not surprising that 25% of people are, today, talking about voting for a third party. That’s actually pretty common.
But historically, we can expect nearly all of these people to change their minds in the intervening 16 months, and vote for one of the big two.
But this IS good news for Chafee and Crist! Because, as recent polls have shown, they ARE one of the big two. In those two governor races, what we can expect to happen instead is that: in Florida, most of the 14% who say they’ll vote for Meek(D), won’t; and in Rhode Island, most of the 20% saying they’ll vote for the Republican, won’t.
What matters isn’t that the letter by your name be an R or a D; what matters is if you’re already in first or second place. Being an R or a D just makes it much easier do that… as does being a former successfully-elected official, which–I feel I should point out–Chafee and Crist are.
There is no duopoly conspiracy at work; there is just the mathematics that say “plurality elections only work if there are just two choices”; everything else flows from that.
The biggest effect that most third-party and independent candidates will have, is to split the vote and cause the wrong one among the top-two to win. (Which, by the way, is why the top-two keeps passing insanely difficult ballot-access laws.)
The solution is an electoral method that can properly handle three or more candidates: approval voting and score voting. In you’re interested in a real chance for third-parties to win, you owe it to yourself to look in to these options.
“yep the first past the post election system is stupid and restricts Democracy. Sadly were are one of the only places to still use it.”
???
Canada, India, most of the African continent, Mexico, about half of the Middle East and Caribbean nations, South Korea, and the UK all use it.
Sure, if you only look at Europe, we’re one of the only places to use it, but the world is a big place.
This is exactly wrong, as events have already shown. As the Tea Party movement has become more indendent, Republican politicians have become more likely to embrace their extremist positions. That’s because the Republicans need them. The difference between the right and the left in this country is that the former are willing to walk and form their own party when their major one fails to do what they want. We don’t.
That’s the lesson to take away from this.
Good point
I’ve actually researched voting systems a lot. Why would you promote approval voting and score voting, which is used in no countries and has several flaws over instant runoff voting (alternative voting).
score voting encourages only to vote with maximum scores and approval voting is flawed compared to instant runoff voting encouraging you to only vote for your top choice in single member districts.
The NDP did not bring Canada single payer. It was the CCF a party that existed before the NDP.
For one simple reason: instant runoff voting does nothing to change us away from our current two-party dominated paradigm.
I know that there’s a lot of claims to the contrary on the internet, so please give me a chance to refute them.
First, consider the poster-child of IRV use: Australia, which has used it for over 100 years. How many parties are represented in it’s House of Representatives?
Just two.
(This is counting the Lib/Nat coalition as a single party; but I think that’s a fair accusation, since many Australians think of them as a single party, and they don’t run candidates against each others incumbents.)
(Meanwhile, the Australian Senate uses STV (which is the proportionally-representative grandfather of IRV), and consist of about 9% third parties.)
Next, consider the US towns that have used IRV recently: Burlington VT and San Francisco CA. In all the seats that third-parties have won under IRV, (mayor in Burlington, a single council seat in SF) the exact same seat had been won by the exact same party within the last few election cycles, but under plurality voting rules.
In other words, IRV didn’t help, it just maintained the status quo.
There’s a reason why this is: IRV doesn’t eliminate the spoiler problem, it only delays it. In a three-candidate race, as long as each candidate gets at least 25% of the vote, a spoiler can still occur. And when a spoiler occurs, the third-parties’ supporters abandon it in droves; whether they do it at 5% or 30%, they’ll still lose and still be blamed for ruining the election. As long as spoilers still exist, the third party has a huge systemic disadvantage.
On the other hand, in a three-candidate race, approval and score voting don’t have this problem; there is no spoiler.
I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say “But if I approve my second-choice, I might make my first-choice lose; so shouldn’t I just vote for one, like I do now with plurality?” It’s true that doing so could make your first-choice lose, but in EVERY OTHER VOTING SYSTEM, including IRV, when you consider supporting your true-first-choice, the risk is that you cause the election of your LAST choice, because of spoilers; that you get your second choice is actually a HUGE improvement, and I think this is why approval and score perform so well in computer simulations.
It’s true that no nation is currently using either of these methods; that’s because all research for the last 60 years in this field has been on ranked-ballot methods (IRV, Condorcet, Borda count, Bucklin, etc.), and approval and score are not ranked-ballot methods, but rather something called cardinal-ballot methods. And in the last 10 years, some very clever economics and mathematics work has been done to show that cardinal methods can achieve surprisingly unexpected results which no ranked method can.
But it IS in use all around us, in many places where a choice has to be made among MORE THAN TWO options. Look at judged Olympic events: those often use a system like score voting. Look at IMDB’s Top 100 movies: it’s be ludicrous to have a plurality- or IRV-style election to determine that, but they use a system like score voting and get great results. And these methods are also used to elect officers for the Mathematical Association of America as well as the American Statistical Association; THEY know that these are statistically-robust methods for social decision making.
I urge you to look into any/all of the following for further information:
William Poundstone’s book “Gaming the Vote”
The work of Professor Warren Smith and the Center for Range Voting at http://rangevoting.org
And finally my own blog on this issue, The Least of All Evils, at http://leastevil.blogspot.com
“Moderate” voters…define “moderate.”
As a green myself, I don’t think it is very likely the demopublicans will give us instant runoff voting. I am looking to the greens to become the second party in most of America save the deep south, the plains, and basin states. However Republicans will be fighting a war of attrition in those areas because their children are not so right wing.
I believe if the greens or a left indy took 30 percent of their voters it would discredit the party completely and many people would start questioning the status quo.
Moderate Voter: noun; A voter who things that the Democrats not republican-y enough, and also that the Republicans are not democrat-y enough.
I think it is strange you can say Australia only has two parties when there are three in the House. Also Papua New Guinea use instant runoff voting and it has many parties. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Parliament_of_Papua_New_Guinea
I do personally prefer proportional representation (which can be a natural development form using ranked voting). I still see may problems with approval voting and don’t see how it is likely to produce a better result. I doubt most people aren’t going to just vote for one candidate to maximize the chances of their preferred outcome.
If you want to insist that Lib/Nat is two separate parties, fine; but when Australian political pundits report on elections, they report on the “two party vote share”, between Labor and Lib/Nat.
As for Papau New Guinea, it–like Canada and the UK–uses a parliamentary system, which tends to have somewhat better representation of minor parties.
You will note that third parties are about as well-represented in Canada and the UK, which–I emphasize–STILL USE PLURALITY VOTING, as they are in PNG, even though PNG uses IRV. Again: there is no evidence to suggest that IRV has improved anything.
Proportional representation would be great, I agree. But NO locality has ever instituted IRV and THEN instituted STV (the PR-enhanced grandfather of IRV); instead, most places that institute IRV first FALL BACK to plurality. Burlington VT, and Aspen CO have both voted to get rid of IRV after using them for just one or two elections. And that’s just this year! So don’t try to tell me that IRV is worth it because it will get us to PR: it’s won’t, so it’s not.
Finally, I thought I explained how the fear that everyone will “vote for one” was misplaced. I quote myself:
“I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say “But if I approve my second-choice, I might make my first-choice lose; so shouldn’t I just vote for one, like I do now with plurality?” It’s true that doing so could make your first-choice lose, but in EVERY OTHER VOTING SYSTEM, including IRV, when you consider supporting your true-first-choice, the risk is that you cause the election of your LAST choice, because of spoilers; that you get your second choice is actually a HUGE improvement, and I think this is why approval and score perform so well in computer simulations.”
That’s the logic behind it, and computer simulations back the logic up: when voters decide to be strategic in their ballots, approval voting and score voting lead to dramatically better outcomes, while IRV leads to the same outcomes as plurality.
http://rangevoting.org/BayRegsFig.html
If you look at no other links I’ve supplied, look at that one.
And when Chafee and Christ win, they will go straight to the Republican caucus, just like old times. And it happens to be July, where are all these independent and third-party candidates going to come from all of a sudden? The only independent candidate I’m hoping for is the one who will run a credible primary and independent campaign against Barack (The Corporate Shill) Obama!
selected the least regretted candidate is really not my top goal for a political system.
I also believe the legislative council of Victoria moved from instant run off voting recently to proportional representation.
Didn’t I say there was a “market” for a 3rd party? I don’t mean the Tea Party, that is a further push to the Right, won’t happen. As the storyline clarifies on them, it will become apparent that while some have sound thinking on a few issues, the darker regions of the party are at the least Nationalist and at worst card carrying members of the Aryan Nation/KKK/Neo-Nazi/Militia, take your pick.
Labor is incensed but I guess they don’t want to drop support of Democrats.
Who’s left (pun intended) with the big money and foot soldiers?
Chafee may claim that he’s an Independent, but he has an ridiculous record as Bush’s rubber stamp. In those rare cases where he did not act as a rubber stamp, he quietly waited until the bill had enough rightwing support that it would pass, and only THEN do something about it.
See for yourself:
http://www.SenatorChafee.com/Independent
No, of course it isn’t; you want the one you like best. Everyone wants that, but, hey, guess what: everyone disagrees on who that is. Someone is going to regret the outcome. Minimizing the regret is the best we can do for society.
The best electoral system for YOU is YOU dictating who wins the election. But the best electoral system for US is score voting.