Third Party Power

One will find that in most races, whether it is a race for Senate or for the position of President, the main parties and the only ones usually discussed are the Democratic and Republican parties. In most cases the smaller party’s, known as third parties, such as the Green party are disregarded and often forgot about. However in some races these smaller parties do hold some political power and influence. This is the case in the Illinois race for Senate. In this race there seems to be an unusual number of voters committed to minor-party candidates. For example there are many voters committed to the Green Party’s nominee, LeAlan Jones as well as the Libertarian nominee, Mike Labno. There also seems to be a significant number of voters who haven’t committed to a candidate at all yet. Collectively, the third-party candidates have held between 5 and 11 percent of the vote in recent polls, while about 10 to 15 percent of voters remain undecided. This is a rare case as two groups of people, the third-party voters and the undecided voters, who usually hold little power in a race, hold a significant amount of power in this senate race.

This situation brings up an interesting fact and that is in some cases the third-party voters and the undecided voters can hold power. People can also join these groups in opposition to the other two main parties. This is the case in Illinois as Illinois residents have some recent history of casting protest votes for third-party candidates when they are dissatisfied with the major-party nominees, as they appear to be this year. As there is not a clear trend in the race, both Mr. Kirk’s and Mr. Giannoulias’s campaigns have released their own polling in the state. The affects of these two groups of people on the Senate race in Illinois is great and it is very interesting to me how these groups have established their power.