The Effect Of Third Party Candidates In Presidential Elections
...of the United States have the opportunity to vote for
many different offices at the national, state, and local levels, the election of
the president of the United States every four years is the focal point of the
American political process. The American political system has maintained a two-
party system since its inception. Political scientists argue that a two-party
system is the most stable and efficient means of running a democratic nation as
a mono-party system leads toward tyranny, and a multi-party system creates over-
diversification and gridlock (Mazmanian 6). The Constitution of the United
States does not in any way limit the structure of the political system to two
parties. In fact, there has been no presidential election where there were only
two candidates; however, third-party candidates are rarely represented in a
majority of the states, and those that were on the ballot in a majority of
states have never been successful. However, on a few occasions, third party
candidates have been able to make a significant impact on the presidential
election process such as George Wallace in 1968 and H. Ross Perot in 1992.
Through nineteenth century there was little deviation from the traditional
two-party system. Until then, political candidates were utterly dependent
upon
the political infrastructure of an established party for their campaigns. Until
the development of mass media technologies, including radio and television,
political candidates had no direct means of communicating with the public and
were thus dependent
on the communications systems of the major parties. Thus,
third party movements lacked the capabilities to run an effective campaign
against the major parties.
However, mass...
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