[Editor’s note: ADDENDUM AT BOTTOM: Strength of Massachusetts Third Parties. Jim gave us a very interesting chart of party registrations of third parties. You can see it at the associated link.]
What does this say about the relative strength of third parties , at least in the 29 states that have voter registration by party?
The Libertarian Party is clearly in the lead, with something like 740,000 registered voters. After a decade (1998-20008) of relatively slow growth, after 2008, Libertarian Party numbers took off, and the number of registered Libertarians roughly tripled between 2008 and 2022.
The Green Party did respectively well through 2004 but then fell back. Since 2010 the count of Green Party registered voters has been nearly flat at about a quarter of a million. However, that’s good enough for second place among third parties.
The Constitution Party was at about 60,000 voters in 2008, but since then has a bit more than doubled. The Constitution Party is thus in third place among third parties.
Founded in 1998, the Working Families Party has since grown to about 60,000 registered voters, half the size of the Constitution Party and a twelfth the size of the Libertarian Party.
Not seen on the graph, because it functions primarily within the Democratic Party, are the Democratic Socialists. One estimate of the size of this group is the number of dues-paying members, The Democratic Socialists claim 92,000 dues-paying members, making them more than five times as large as the Libertarian Party and its 16,150 dues-paying members.
Strength of Massachusetts Third Parties: Massachusetts has three dozen of these, technically known as ‘Political Designations.’
Massachusetts has 4,884,076 registered voters.
Political Designations and their numbers of voters:
Libertarian Party 17493
United Independent Party 16747
Conservative 3734
Green-Rainbow 3274
American Independent 2697
Mass Independent Party 2416
Green Party USA 717
Constitution Party 330
There are also smaller parties.
LP voter registrations are growing much faster than the population growth rate.
“I have some wild stories…”
Would love to hear them.
Excellent data, G.P.
After 42 years of screwing around with our registrations by putting bad actors in the LP and other shenanigans (I have some wild stories…), about 2010 the far-left, kooky Christians, Democratic Party and GOP ‘dirty tricks’ operatives seemed to give up.
Though the Democrats still seem happy to dissolve a state LP with local legal malarkey, though.
US LP has apparently now got back on its natural trajectory, and this seems to comport with population growth as well since 1971.