Third party spoilers have no steam in ‘08
Tiny URL: http://tinyurl.com/6cs42d
Before the Presidential elections in 2000, the most popular way of describing Ralph Nader was “the safety belt” guy. After the elections, the description changed to “the spoiler”. Democrats openly blamed him for stealing votes from Al Gore and Republicans secretly thanked him for the same. And of course, it wasn’t the first time a third party candidate changed the course of the nation. Ross Perot in 1992, George Wallace in 1968 and Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 had the same spoiler effect on the Presidential elections.
But so far this year, neither John McCain nor Barack Obama have a serious third party candidate to be afraid of. According to the a Gallup poll survey, only 2% of the registered voters have opted for any third party candidate in an open-ended question. While 45% of the registered voters named Barack Obama as their Presidential pick and 38% went of John McCain, only 1% of the voters named Bob Barr - the Libertarian party candidate and same was true for Ralph Nader - former Green Party and now an Independent candidate. Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party did not register any votes. The detailed report on the survey can be found on Gallup’s website here.
