American Political System: Difference between revisions

Currently,{{when}} there are three third-party federal office holders, all of them senators. The first is Bernie Sanders, a senator from Vermont who identifies himself as a socialist, campaigns as an independent but for all intents and purposes caucuses ("hangs out") with the Democrats - to the point that he was a serious contender for the Democratic nomination for President for the 2020 election, placing second to Joe Biden in the primaries. The second is Joseph Lieberman, a senator from Connecticut who was not renominated by the Democratic Party in the 2006 election, but ran as an "Independent Democrat" without party funding, won reelection anyway, and continues to caucus as a Democrat. The third is Lisa Murkowski of [[Alaska]]; initially appointed as a Republican to the seat vacated by her father when he was elected governor, she lost to a Tea Party-backed candidate in the 2010 Republican primary, ran as a write-in candidate, and won; she continues to caucus with the Republicans. The latter two senators tend to break from their party line more, mostly out of bitterness due to being out-primaried (and in Lieberman's case, his long-standing and well-noted differences with the main line of the Democrats on foreign policy, which prompted his break in the first place).

No third party candidate has ever been elected president, thoughalthough [[George Washington]] was a party-less candidate. Even when the Republican Party won its first presidential election with Abraham Lincoln in 1860, it was already one of the top two parties going into the election year. However, there have been several third party candidacies with a sizable impact on the two-party race—which is to say, backlash on the third-party voters' second choice. This is known as the "spoiler" effect, most recently observed when Ross Perot ran as an independent candidate in 1992, received 19% of the popular vote and split conservatives, and in 2000, where Green Party candidate Ralph Nader's showing of 2% was sufficient to tip the scales in [[George W. Bush]]'s favor in [[Florida]].