The Effect Of Third Party Candidates In Presidental Elections

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was little deviation from the traditional
two-party system. Until then, political candidates were utterly dependant 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 dependant 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 media has changed the scope of the election process and
brought about the demise of the major political parties (Robinson 147).
Candidates who run a television dominated campaign have hurt their parties in a
number of ways. The media specialists who manage such campaigns tend to be
loyal to a candidate rather than to the candidate's party; as a result, the
campaign supports a single candidate and not the entire ticket of the party. ...

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and the candidate is running against
relatively weak candidates of the major parties (Mazmanian 21). However, at
this time, political analysts stipulate that the chances of this happening are
slim because a majority of Americans are xenophobic enough to be wary of the
unknown candidate.
An independent candidate can, however, have a dramatic impact on the
outcome of the election without actually winning. Simply by running, a strong
independent candidate can create problems for the major candidate whose views
are most similar his own. First, the independent can either split the vote
causing the opposing major candidate to win, or second, the independent can
withdraw and ...

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