Will we ever see a 3 party system?

[Guest Bosstones Fan]

Perot got a significantly higher percentage of the popular vote in 1992 than Nader did in 2000, IIRC.

19% nationally, I believe. Someone with the time to research this might be able to verify it?

[Guest Tyler McClelland]

Nader may have clocked in at close to Perot's numbers if the Green voters weren't so utterly afraid that their vote would cost Gore the election. As was documented before, many voters jumped off the ship to help block Bush. Not enough, it turned out.

 

And yes, Perot got ~19% of the vote that year.

[Guest NoCalMike]

Well Perot has an advantage over all other Independent/3rd party candidates, in that he has billions of dollars to run his campaign on. Which he did in 1992. He had money enough to go punch-to-punch with the Dems and Republicans. Most other 3rd party candidates can't say that. It is a lot harder to complete a successful campaign when 90% of your campaign contributions come from private citizens chipping in a dollar here and a dollar there as compared to someone who gets thrown $30 million by a lobbists for whatever their cause is. You get the picture.