As has already been reported, the 2010 Connecticut gubernatorial race is an instance at which a minor party, by having nominated one of the major party nominees, seems to have changed the identity of the winner. The official Connecticut gubernatorial vote in 2010 is: Republican Tom Foley 560,874 votes; Democrat Dan Malloy, 540,970 votes on the Democratic line and 26,308 votes on the Working Families Party line (there were also 17,629 votes for the Independent Party nominee, Thomas Marsh). Malloy’s victory margin of 6,404 votes is smaller than the number of votes Malloy received on the Working Families line.
This is the first time that a minor party, engaged in cross-nomination of a major party nominee, seems to have tipped the outcome in any gubernatorial or U.S. Senate race, anywhere in the country, since the New York 1994 gubernatorial election. In that 1994 election, Republican nominee George Pataki only received 2,156,057 votes on the Republican line, a smaller number than the number of votes for Mario Cuomo on the Democratic line, 2,272,903. But the Conservative Party’s nomination of Pataki, which gave him another 328,605 votes, put Pataki over the top. Cuomo had the nomination of the Liberal Party, and Pataki also had the nomination of the Tax Cut Now Party, but the vote total for those two parties was relatively small and did not affect the identity of the winner.