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at least some politics is local
Nov. 7th, 2012 01:35 amthere were five parties on my ballot: the two big ones, the green part, the libertarians, and the independent party of delaware. the last seems to be a slate of otherwise unaffiliated and unconnected candidates, to the limit of my ability to tell without doing much checking. ;)
by and large, none of the little parties did all that well in general. looking at the results in my paywall-enabled local fishwrapper, the greens barely broke 1% of the vote in any race. the libertarians got more than 5% in five local races, and 10% in one, but all of those were against a single big-party candidate.
the independent party did the best of any of the little ones, getting ~4% of the vote for their headline candidate, alex pires, who was running for the federal senate in a four way race (libertarians being the fourth party). a few others of their candidates broke 1% of the vote. notably, in the 16th state senatorial district, their guy got 20% of the vote against just one candidate, a republican, and in the 1st state senatorial district, they got 11% of the vote in a three-way race... but the third contestant there was a libertarian.
i'm not sure any conclusions can be drawn from this. while 20% of the vote is interesting, it doesn't win elections. about all i can say for that is that the minor parties seemed to have learned to pick their battles. if they're the second candidate in what would otherwise be a one-man race, they can pick up the protest vote... and if they can come up with plausible issues, they can get votes from people who actually like what they're saying.
i do wonder if the independent party benefited from not having any brand-name baggage in the way that the greens and libertarians do... which is interesting if true for organizing new third parties.
by and large, none of the little parties did all that well in general. looking at the results in my paywall-enabled local fishwrapper, the greens barely broke 1% of the vote in any race. the libertarians got more than 5% in five local races, and 10% in one, but all of those were against a single big-party candidate.
the independent party did the best of any of the little ones, getting ~4% of the vote for their headline candidate, alex pires, who was running for the federal senate in a four way race (libertarians being the fourth party). a few others of their candidates broke 1% of the vote. notably, in the 16th state senatorial district, their guy got 20% of the vote against just one candidate, a republican, and in the 1st state senatorial district, they got 11% of the vote in a three-way race... but the third contestant there was a libertarian.
i'm not sure any conclusions can be drawn from this. while 20% of the vote is interesting, it doesn't win elections. about all i can say for that is that the minor parties seemed to have learned to pick their battles. if they're the second candidate in what would otherwise be a one-man race, they can pick up the protest vote... and if they can come up with plausible issues, they can get votes from people who actually like what they're saying.
i do wonder if the independent party benefited from not having any brand-name baggage in the way that the greens and libertarians do... which is interesting if true for organizing new third parties.