Can you name the 3rd-party candidates* who have won at least 2% of the national vote in a U.S. presidential election?

created by Booger

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Correctly named candidates will show up below
Answers do not have to be guessed in order
Source: Leip
* - A 3rd party candidate is any candidate not running with one of the two major parties existing at the time.
Note: The Southern Democratic party of 1860 is considered a 3rd party because the members split from the national Democratic party. There were no political parties in the 1789 presidential election.
Also try: States by Presidential Candidates

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Year (Party)	Candidate	% of Vote (Electoral Votes)
2000 (Green and others)		2.73% (0 EVs)
1996 (Reform)		8.40% (0 EVs)
1992 (Independent)		18.91% (0 EVs)
1980 (Independent)		6.61% (0 EVs)
1968 (American Ind.)		13.52% (46 EVs)
1948 (State's Rights)		2.41% (39 EVs)
1948 (Progressive)		2.37% (0 EVs)
1932 (Socialist)		2.23% (0 EVs)
1924 (Progressive)		16.61% (13 EVs)
1920 (Socialist)		3.41% (0 EVs)
1916 (Socialist)		3.19% (0 EVs)
1912 (Progressive or 'Bull Moose')		27.40% (88 EVs)
1912 (Socialist)		5.99% (0 EVs)

Year (Party)	Candidate	% of Vote (Electoral Votes)
1908 (Socialist)		2.83% (0 EVs)
1904 (Socialist)		2.98% (0 EVs)
1892 (Populist)		8.51% (22 EVs)
1892 (Prohibition)		2.24% (0 EVs)
1888 (Prohibition)		2.20% (0 EVs)
1880 (Greenback)		3.32% (0 EVs)
1860 (Southern Democrat)		18.20% (72 EVs)
1860 (Constitutional Union)		12.62% (39 EVs)
1856 (American or 'Know Nothing')		21.54% (8 EVs)
1852 (Free Soil)		4.93% (0 EVs)
1848 (Free Soil)		10.13% (0 EVs)
1844 (Liberty)		2.30 % (0 EVs)
1832 (Anti-Masonic)		7.78% (7 EVs)

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Major 3rd Party Candidates Quiz

Rating:	Report a mistake
Created by: Booger -
Published: September 8th, 2009
Category: History
Plays: 27,103

Tags: Candidate Quizzes, least, major, party, vote, electoral, election, 3rd, presidental, us history pack, Presidents, national, won

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	rockgolf:	Sep 8th, 2009 at 20:07 GMT	13 points
	How different would history be if Nader dropped out or did even slightly less well in Florida in 2000?

	InsertCleverName:	Sep 8th, 2009 at 20:08 GMT	14 points
	Great idea for a quiz.

	RyanUR:	Sep 8th, 2009 at 20:08 GMT	8 points
	I wonder if a third-party candidate will ever win another electoral vote.

	Thalia:	Sep 8th, 2009 at 20:10 GMT	3 points
	I think William Jennings Bryan should at least be a bonus answer... in the 1896 election, he won over 46% of the popular vote as the nominee of both the Democrats and the Populist Party (which would be a 3rd party).

	HPZ:	Sep 8th, 2009 at 20:17 GMT	23 points
	Should be "Millard Fillmore."

	rockgolf:	Sep 8th, 2009 at 20:23 GMT	24 points
	@HPZ: There's an irony in correcting the spelling of the candidate for the "Know Nothing" party.

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	Tommy_C:	Sep 8th, 2009 at 20:40 GMT	4 points
	RyanUR -- No third party candidate will win an electoral vote until the Supreme Court rules the campaign finance laws unconstitutional. Those laws are there to protect the 2 party system from competition.

	Tommy_C:	Sep 8th, 2009 at 20:46 GMT	5 points
	Three former presidents on the list. Some people just don't know how to retire and relax. If they'd only had Sporcle.....

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	NoVan:	Sep 8th, 2009 at 20:52 GMT	3 points
	Goddamn, who starts a political party just to be against the Masons? Seems so negative... oh, wait, politics, I forgot.

	SPU:	Sep 8th, 2009 at 20:52 GMT	9 points
	Thalia: that is not quite special. For example, Barack Obama was also the nominee of the United Citizens Party (in SC) and the Working Families Party (in NY) last year, and McCain of the NY Independence and Conservative Parties (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_candidates_in_the_United_States_presidential_election,_2008). People are elected President, not parties, and this quiz is about the people who got over 2% of the vote despite not being nominated by a major party.

	NoVan:	Sep 8th, 2009 at 20:54 GMT	11 points
	And, @Chaim Mattis Keller: If they won less than 2% of the vote, why should they be included?

AKAPseudonym:

Sep 8th, 2009 at 20:56 GMT

-4 points

No Pat Paulsen bonus answer? Shame on you Sporcle.

Year (Party)	Candidate	% of Vote (Electoral Votes)
2000 (Green and others)		2.73% (0 EVs)
1996 (Reform)		8.40% (0 EVs)
1992 (Independent)		18.91% (0 EVs)
1980 (Independent)		6.61% (0 EVs)
1968 (American Ind.)		13.52% (46 EVs)
1948 (State's Rights)		2.41% (39 EVs)
1948 (Progressive)		2.37% (0 EVs)
1932 (Socialist)		2.23% (0 EVs)
1924 (Progressive)		16.61% (13 EVs)
1920 (Socialist)		3.41% (0 EVs)
1916 (Socialist)		3.19% (0 EVs)
1912 (Progressive or 'Bull Moose')		27.40% (88 EVs)
1912 (Socialist)		5.99% (0 EVs)

	Morbo:	Sep 8th, 2009 at 21:17 GMT	16 points
	Give Eugene Debs points for stick-tuitiveness. Little fella kept trying, at least. He lights up this quiz like a Christmas tree.

	Thalia:	Sep 8th, 2009 at 21:23 GMT	8 points
	@SPU... the difference (besides that it wasn't just in one state) is that Bryan ran with a different vice president for each party (Sewall on the Democratic ticket and Watson on Populist) and 27 of the electoral votes that were cast for Bryan were cast for the Bryan-Watson ticket. Plus Bryan's failure to win in the 1896 election was so historically significant for the Populist Party that I thought it was worth at least a bonus answer.

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	lalalala:	Sep 8th, 2009 at 22:00 GMT	8 points
	rockgolf: how different would it be if perot hadn't run in 1992?

	Guinevere:	Sep 8th, 2009 at 22:08 GMT	2 points
	Did better than I thought - 11/26. Thank you Eugene Debs! Should've gotten George Wallace. I only got one before 1900. (Fillmore, and Lord knows I forget his existence most of the time.)

	thisisaname:	Sep 8th, 2009 at 22:13 GMT	7 points
	Nice to see US Election Atlas being used as a source. (Longtime reader here.) Also nice to see that the underdogs are given the spotlight for once. Stick it to the two-party system!

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	HtomSirveaux:	Sep 8th, 2009 at 22:35 GMT	6 points
	According to several books I've got - including the Jackson biography "American Lion" - while William Wirt did get 7 ev's from Vermont, John Floyd of the "Nullifier" party got 11 from South Carolina....Nullification, btw, referred to the campaign issue of whether state rights superceded federal laws.

	HtomSirveaux:	Sep 8th, 2009 at 22:36 GMT	3 points
	forgot to mention...that's 1832.

	NoVan:	Sep 8th, 2009 at 23:58 GMT	1 point
	@ Stephen Crabtree: Wow, Vermont used to have 7 electoral votes? Either they had a far bigger population then, or the USA had a different system for assigning EVs.

	banutzu:	Sep 9th, 2009 at 00:10 GMT	4 points
	good stuff more politics quizzes please

	Kazbar:	Sep 9th, 2009 at 00:17 GMT	1 point
	Mmm, Ross Perotgurt

	Chubcity:	Sep 9th, 2009 at 01:28 GMT	2 points
	If you think of Ralph Nader as the "spoiler" of 2000, think about the 200,000 registered Florida Democrats who voted for George W. Bush instead. Maybe they should have voted for Al Gore if he was so great. Certainly a candidate should expect the members of his own party to vote for him, and not feel that he is owed the votes of one group or another. People vote for third parties because they don't find their views represented by the major party candidates. Al Gore wasn't even able to convince 200,000 members of his own party in Florida to vote for him over the Republican.

	jaymc:	Sep 9th, 2009 at 01:31 GMT	7 points
	@NoVan: Vermont's population was smaller in 1832 than it is today, but it had a much larger share of the entire country back then. In 1832 roughly 2% of all Americans lived in Vermont, compared to 0.2% now. So it makes sense they would get more EVs.

	RedLIon:	Sep 9th, 2009 at 03:56 GMT	6 points
	Man. How weird is it that one can wine almost a quarter of the population's votes, but only get 8 EVs? I love my country, but our political system is mad ****ed up.

	cmkeller:	Sep 9th, 2009 at 04:19 GMT	-3 points
	@No Van: I thought Buchanan's candidacy in 2000 was notable, for the confusion of the butterfly ballots if for nothing else. And LaRouche runs for president all the time and is a well-known crackpot politician, so I figured he's be a good bonus just as a lark.

	bosoxfanzz:	Sep 9th, 2009 at 05:56 GMT	4 points
	As a Madison (WI) native, I viciously wag my finger at the 94% who don't get Fighting Bob.

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	shakescene:	Sep 9th, 2009 at 06:06 GMT	6 points
	Please add Eugene V. Debs as an acceptable alternative for Debs and Eugene Debs.

	shakescene:	Sep 9th, 2009 at 06:10 GMT	3 points
	To Stephen Crabtree: South Carolina was the last state (in 1868) to use popular election, rather than election by the state legislature, to pick Electors. So those ante-bellum S.C. token nullification candidates got zero popular votes and thus 0% of the national popular vote.

	quiztaker:	Sep 9th, 2009 at 13:27 GMT	4 points
	@RedLion, To be fair, in 1856 there were only 296 electors, compared to 538 today, so 8 EVs meant a lot more.

	moegoldberg:	Sep 9th, 2009 at 14:45 GMT	2 points
	I remember Clinton Fisk hitting that clutch HR in '75, but I don't remember him running for president ... wait .. no Carlton ... close enough

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	quiztaker:	Sep 9th, 2009 at 15:57 GMT	7 points
	@chrismet: They had already been president, Roosevelt from 1901 to 1909 and Van Buren from 1837 to 1841.