Aaron Hamlin has this essay about the 2014 election and approval voting. It is on the web page electology.org, a page set up to advocate for approval voting.
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On November 4, fourteen independent candidates were elected to state legislatures.
Two were elected to State Senates: Harri Anne Smith in Alabama, and Edward O’Neill in Rhode Island. Both were incumbents running for re-election.
Twelve were elected to lower houses:
Alaska: Dan Ortiz of Ketchikan
Georgia: incumbent Rusty Kidd
Maine: incumbents Joseph Brooks, James Campbell, Ben Chipman, and Jeffrey Evangelos
Rhode Island: Blake Filippi
Vermont: Alyson Eastman, Barbara S. Murphy, Paul Poirier, Adam Greshin, and Laura Sibilia.
As already posted, eight Progressives were elected in Vermont, so that makes a total of 22 minor party and independent candidates elected to state legislatures this year.
Only 218 independent candidates ran for state legislative seats in November 2014, so 6.4% of them were elected.
Kentucky, like most states, held legislative elections on November 4. The Democratic Party had a 54-46 majority in the State House going into the election. The State House election returns now show that there are 53 Democrats, 46 Republicans, and one seat not settled yet. This is bad news for U.S. Senator Rand Paul. The Republican Party has a majority in the State Senate, and earlier this year the State Senate passed a bill letting individuals run simultaneously for President (or vice-president) and other office. But the Democratic majority in the House wouldn’t pass the bill.
Paul is exploring the idea of asking the Kentucky Republican Party to nominate delegates to the national convention by caucus instead of by presidential primary. See this story.
The United Independent Party polled 3.31% of the Massachusetts gubernatorial vote, according to this story. Therefore it is a qualified party, although it must poll 3% again in 2016 to retain its status, unless it can get its registration up to 1% of the state total. But because the party is qualified, its name will be printed on the voter registration form, which will make it easier to do a registration drive.
If the party does get its registration up to 1% by the end of 2015, it need not worry about the vote test in 2016. If it does meet the registration test, it will be the first party in Massachusetts to use that alternative, which has only existed since 1990.
The Monkey Cage is a regular feature in the Washington Post that presents political science research. This column, “Independents Didn’t Decide the Midterm Election” by Samara Klav and Yanna Krupnikov presents research suggesting that most self-described independent voters are just as partisan as party members. It says the real reason Democrats did badly in this week’s election is that such a large proportion of Democrats didn’t turn out to vote.