The Oregon Working Families Party, like the Working Families Party in other states, generally nominates individuals who are also Democratic Party nominees. The Working Families Party only bothers to qualify as a party in states that allow fusion.

However, this year, the Oregon Working Families Party has nominated two member-nominees of the Independent Party. See this story. This is believed to be the first time the Working Families Party in any state has ever nominated a member of a party other than the Democratic, Republican, or Working Families Parties, for any federal or state office.

South Carolina has one of the nation’s most lenient laws on how a party remains on the ballot. A party continues to remain on the ballot if it runs at least one candidate for any partisan office, every four years.

The Labor Party and the Independence Party each have one candidate in South Carolina this year. Neither party had any candidates in 2012, so they each needed to run someone this year to remain ballot-qualified.

The Labor Party is running Harold Geddings III for U.S. House, 2nd district. See here for information on his campaign. The Labor Party petitioned for ballot status in 2006, but did not run its first candidate until 2010, when it ran Brett Bursey for State House, 69th district. He got 3.06% in a race against both major parties. The South Carolina Labor Party is the only state unit of the Labor Party formed in 1996 that ever obtained a place on the ballot. The national Labor Party was founded by Tony Mazzocchi, a prominent labor leader. Unlike the Working Families Party, the Labor Party has never supported Democratic nominees.

The Independence Party is running Tony Boyce for State House, district 25. See here for more about his campaign. In 2012 he tried to be a Democratic nominee for State Legislature, but was kept off the primary ballot, along with dozens of other major party members, due to a very confusing campaign finance requirement. Boyce is in a two-person race against a Democrat. The Independence Party of South Carolina, along with the Independence Party of New York city, are the only remaining ballot-qualified parties in the U.S. still controlled by leaders of the old New Alliance Party of Lenora Fulani and Fred Newman. The Independence Party of South Carolina has intervened in the pending lawsuit over whether the Republican Party of Greenville County may have a closed primary for itself. The Independence Party intervened against the Republican Party and on the side of state law.

All nationally-organized political parties, major and minor, have fewer nominees for U.S. House this year than in 2012. Counting the 435 regular seats plus the District of Columbia Delegate seat, the 2014 numbers are: Democrats 400; Republicans 395; Libertarian 122; Green 43: Constitution 13; other parties 38; and 82 independent candidates.

By contrast, in 2012, the numbers were: Republicans 415; Democrats 404; Libertarians 137; Green 59; Constitution 22; other parties 22; and 104 independent candidates. These figures only include candidates who are on the ballot and do not include write-in candidates.

2014 is the first congressional election in which no party with “socialist” in its name is on the ballot for any congressional race. This is a true statement going back to 1890, the first year any state used government-printed ballots in a congressional election.

When a party has more than a single candidate in a particular race, that is still counted as one.