Michael Barone‘s latest column posted at National Review Online explores voter support for candidates outside the two major political parties.
[T]he contests in Kansas and South Dakota feature purportedly independent candidates. In September, Gallup reported, 58 percent of Americans said that a third political party was needed. So maybe it’s not surprising that, when presented with a well-known independent candidate, many voters consider voting for him.
But will they still feel that way on Election Day? Recent elections in Brazil on October 5 and in Britain in 2010 suggest that they might not.
In Brazil, Eduardo Campos, who had been running third with between 7 and 13 percent in the polls, died in a plane crash August 13. His vice-presidential candidate, Marina Silva, who had run for president herself in 2010, took his place and within days zoomed up to parity, at 34 percent, with incumbent Dilma Rousseff. Languishing in third place in every September poll was PSDB nominee Aecio Neves.
But on Election Day, Rousseff led with 42 percent. Neves was second with 34 percent and Silva a distant third with 21 percent. Those numbers were very similar to the first-round results in 2010, when Rousseff had 47 percent, the PSDB nominee 33 percent, and Silva 19 percent.
So election returns from four years before seemed a better predictor than the late-August and September polls. …
… Something similar happened in the 2010 British election. After the initial debate between prime-ministerial candidates — the first in British history — support for Nick Clegg and his Liberal Democratic party ballooned. Incumbent Labour prime minister Gordon Brown and Conservative challenger David Cameron trailed behind.
But on Election Day, most Britons voted either Conservative or Labour, as they have since 1922, with Conservatives gaining seats, as widely expected. Clegg’s Lib Dems actually won fewer parliamentary seats than they had in 2005.
What this suggests is that voters may flirt with third-party candidates during a campaign but, when it comes down to voting, they tend to choose between two major parties in pretty much the same proportions as they have before.
The American political system, more than Brazil’s or Britain’s, tends to strengthen this tendency. The Electoral College at the presidential level and single-member seats in Senate and House elections are formidable barriers to third parties and independent candidacies.
