Here are their vote totals in the last six elections:
1992 Howard Phillips and Albion Knight 43,369 votes.
1996 Howard Phillips and Herb Titus 184,820 votes
2000 Howard Phillips and Curtis Frazier 98,022 votes
2004 Michael Peroutka and Chuck Baldwin 143,630 votes
2008 Chuck Baldwin and Darrell Castle 199,750 votes
2012 Virgil Goode and Jim Clymer 98,755 votes
As for the Libertarian Party, it doubled their tally for this year's Presidential candidate and received 1.2 million votes, mostly on the coat tails of disgruntled Ron Paul supporters, yet it barely broke 1% of the total electorate.
No third party candidate has ever won a national election, unless you count Abraham Lincoln in 1860. In that case, the Whig Party had disintegrated as the second party, and Lincoln and others cobbled together a replacement second party with remnants of the Whig and Know-Nothing Parties and some disgruntled Democrats. Historically, third parties have helped the two main parties win elections, starting with Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party in 1912, which helped elect Woodrow Wilson; George Wallace's American Independent Party in 1968, which took away enough Southern Democrats to elect Richard Nixon; and Ross Perot's Reform Party, which enabled Bill Clinton to win twice in 1992 and 1996 with a plurality of the vote. In other cases, they are ineffectual even if they have significant vote totals, as with Strom Thurmond and Henry Wallace in 1948, who pulled right-wing and left-wing votes from the Democrats, respectively, but who failed to defeat Truman, and John Anderson in 1980, whose RINO campaign did not deter Reagan from winning a landslide.
Good luck to Cain, Palin, and any others who look toward a third party, but historical evidence indicates it will be a near impossible task.
“Historically, third parties have helped the two main parties win elections.”
Bingo!
Bush won Florida in 2000 by 537 votes while 97,488 voted for third party Nader and so the election went to George not Gore.
Clinton won the 1992 election with only 43% of the vote, HW Bush lost with 37% but the little guy from TX siphoned off 19%.
If there are three candidates running then the top two vote getters should face each other in a runnoff. That way the winner has the final majority margin.
If not the likely 2nd choice for a larger margin ends up being the President.
Winning the presidency with 43% means 57% didn’t want you.