Excerpt from Can Independents Win Statewide Campaigns? by Jim Jonas at the Independent Voter Network:
With so much frustration with the two major parties and with so many voters moving into the unaffiliated/independent column, why haven’t there been more independent and third-party candidates winning elections or at least building viable, competitive campaigns?
In fact, a few independents have been running viable campaigns – but far too infrequently and in far too few places relative to their registration advances.
In Kansas, I helped the independent candidate, Greg Orman, run a highly competitive campaign for the U.S. Senate in a very Republican state (he led in the polls up until election night). We benefited from several favorable factors: a damaged and vulnerable incumbent who survived a primary challenge from the right, a weak Democratic candidate (who eventually dropped out), and Greg was a very good retail and wholesale candidate with some significant personal resources.
Granted, those electoral stars won’t often align to help independent candidates become viable. But those opportunities could become much more frequent once the variety of systemic structural and institutional roadblocks for independent candidates begin to fall.
What are some of those roadblocks? First and foremost, while the two major parties don’t agree on much, they do agree they don’t want any more competition at the ballot box. Self-interested and partisan-drawn legislative districts, onerous ballot-access provisions, and campaign finance laws — along with closed partisan primaries — are just a few of the elements of a rigged system created by the anti-competitive parties.
It’s important to note that many unaffiliated/independent voters, however, while not wanting to formally associate with a party, still tend to stick with one party or the other come the general election. Cultural and historical habits often drive voting loyalties, if not formal party membership.
So, while an “independent socialist” and an “independent libertarian” can both call themselves “independent,” they likely have little politically in common other than their distaste for belonging to a party.
While the registration numbers may show a growing, underserved “middle,” the numbers can be deceiving. To be competitive, independent candidates have to create coherent, compelling messages that can attract and hold enough support from across the spectrum and pull significant support from both parties in a general election.