On December 14, Gary Johnson dismissed his lawsuit against the Commission on Presidential Debates. The case, which had been filed on October 18, 2012, just prior to the last major party presidential debate (held October 22), had alleged that Johnson satisfied the criteria for inclusion. The rules say that three polls must show that the candidate is at 15% or higher. Johnson submitted three polls, in which respondents were only asked if they preferred President Obama or Gary Johnson, and in all three polls, Johnson scored far higher than 15%.

Because the case had been filed so late, relative to the debate itself, no ruling was ever made in this case. Now that the election is over, Johnson and his attorneys saw no further need for the lawsuit.

It will be interesting to see if the Commission on Presidential Debates revises its rules before the 2016 election, to set forth rules on how many presidential candidates, and which candidates, must be included in the various polls that determine eligibility. It is conceivable that new rules would at least encourage pollsters to be more attentive to including all presidential candidates who are on the ballot in states containing enough electoral votes to be elected. Many leading polls do not bother to include anyone except the two major party presidential candidates.

The three Libertarian U.S. House nominees in the nation (in races with both a Republican and a Democrat) who received the highest shares of the vote in 2012 were in Arizona, Mississippi and Kansas. Powell Gammill, in the Arizona 9th district, polled 6.64% (16,620 votes). Ron Williams, in the Mississippi 4th district, polled 6.30% (17,982 votes). He is an experienced campaigner and had run for Governor in the 2011 Republican primary. In Kansas, Libertarian nominee Thomas Jefferson, running in the 4th district, polled 6.20% of the vote (16,058 votes).

Kansas also had the strongest Libertarian showing for a U.S. House race that lacked one major party. As noted earlier, in the Kansas 3rd district, Libertarian Joel Balam polled 31.55% (92,675 votes), the highest showing ever for a Libertarian in any U.S. House race. He almost carried Wyandotte County, which contains Kansas City. Thanks to Krystyna Lesiak for catching the original error in this post; the error was the failure to mention the Arizona race.

In November 2012, Libertarian nominees for U.S. House polled 1.14% of all the votes cast for U.S. House in the nation. This was the fifth time the Libertarian Party had met the 1% standard. The other times were 1998, 2000, 2002, and 2010.

The 2012 outcome is surprising, because no Libertarians appeared on the California ballot for U.S. House in California, which in the past had always been the state that contributed more votes for U.S. House to the Libertarian column than any other (except that in 2008 and 2010, Texas contributed more Libertarian votes). In November 2012, the California top-two law prevented any Californian from voting for any minor party members for Congress.

Other nationally-organized parties, besides the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, that polled at least 1% of the national U.S. House vote in the 20th century and this century are the Progressive Party in 1948; the Socialist Party 1902-1924 and also 1930-1932; the Farmer-Labor Party 1920-1924; the Progressive Party 1912-1914; the Prohibition Party 1900-1916; and the People’s Party 1900.

If the Libertarian Party had polled as much as 1% for President in 2012, it could say that it is the first third party since 1932 to have polled 1% for President, U.S. Senate, and U.S. House, all in the same election. However, Gary Johnson polled .99%. He would have exceeded 1% if he had been on the ballot in either Oklahoma or Michigan.

For U.S. Senate in 2012, Libertarian nominees polled 1.06%.

The calculations relating to this blog post exclude scattering (miscellaneous) write-in votes, because it is generally impossible and also relatively meaningless to classify them into any political party’s column, or into the “independent candidate” column either. However, even if these write-ins were included in the total vote cast, that would scarcely affect the calculations.