In less than a week the pious masses will fill out their ballots, the county clerks will tally the votes, and the White House will change its residents. While in the past it was the Libertarian Party that rather easily found itself third in most presidential elections, today the podium finish is rather uncertain. The Libertarian Party is weaker than ever, and Chase’s campaign has been struggling to gain momentum, irrespective of the rather consistent message delivery by the candidate.
Third-Party Hellscape
This has been a terrible year for third parties. All the energy of the independent voters has been siphoned up by Robert Kennedy Jr just to be forsaken on the final stretch for a vague promise of a cabinet position in the Trump administration.
Kennedy received major attention from independent voters, who could not bring themselves to vote for Trump and Biden (later Harris). After taunting a challenge to the incumbent Democrat, Kennedy launched an independent run for the office, just to traitorously abandon his bid for presidency, and bury all hopes for building a third party in the US. The true reason for the move? It might be that the result on the ballot would be rather laughably disappointing, especially compared to some of his prior polling highs. Kennedy’s campaign strategy was to lead with the isolationist foreign policy message, since the anti-vax rhetoric lost its appeal, as the memory of COVID faded away among voters.
While resistance to funding the war in Ukraine, garnered wide support for Kennedy, the campaign was derailed by the October 7th attack when the self-proclaimed “anti-war” crowd applied the same isolationist standard to the alliances the US had with Israel. Kennedy however was left behind, as his foreign policy views included support for the Jewish state. The anti-NATO voter was now marching in the streets chanting for Palestine. Hate for support of Ukraine and support for Israel tend to be a bundle deal.
The result is that not much enthusiasm to search for alternatives to the duopoly has been left. It was Kennedy who did a massive podcast tour, sucking out all the attention voters paid to third-party candidates, and regularly polled in the vicinity of 10%, having a good chance of being a successful spoiler this election season. Instead, he picked a side in the culture war. He rampaged through the third-party scene, collapsing on the final hundred meters, but leaving his opponents in shambles.
Who will be the largest third party?
While the polls are particularly uncertain this season, the pollsters are unwilling to signal a clear poll leader, and the polling averages show signs of “herding”, the situation is even more dismal for third-party polling. Kennedy used to be consistently present in those results, but now his support has significantly deflated as his independent appeal was lost, and he is no longer part of most polls and polling averages. The situation is even worse for the less prominent candidates. Most national party polls do not include the Libertarian Party nominee. Only 9 major polls featured Oliver and even there his lead over the other small party candidates is not certain.
Oliver is a relatively new name in the game. Chase Oliver was the candidate who captured national media attention two years ago after he ran in the US Senate election in Georgia. His 2% result forced a run-off vote, that left the majority in the Senate uncertain. Oliver focused his campaign on positive messaging and intensive campaigning, he was the first candidate to visit all 50 states.
The Green Party, however, played a rather conservative hand when picking its candidate. Jill Stein is a seasoned perennial candidate, with a large appeal to the woke but isolationist crowd, and likely is hoarding a lot of the single-issue anti-war vote, that can still be captured by Oliver, who is a consistent non-interventionist in his foreign policy agenda. There is little time left to accomplish said task, though Chase’s strong performance in the Free and Equal debates might have helped him in that regard.
Overall, out of the 9 polls, Chase has the lead over Jill Stein in 2, while Stein wins 5. RealClearPolling average shows Stein at 0.9% and Oliver at 0.7%. Oliver has the advantage of better ballot access, as one can cast a vote for him in ten more states, which altogether amounts to 57 more electors. Stein also faces competition from a Marxist professor Cornell West, who had no mathematical chance of winning the election, but could take away Stein’s voters. The margins are incredibly tight.
Can Kennedy still be at the forefront of the race? There is a chance he will emerge as the leader of the electoral plankton. Kennedy was removed on time from ballots only in 19 states, making up 227 electoral votes. This means that he lost about 43% of his vote, by just not being present in those states. Depending on how much vote he will maintain after his capitulation, he could outdo all other third-party candidates.
Other Metrics
In terms of raw numbers, libertarians don’t have much to be hopeful throughout all measures. The fundraising efforts have fallen significantly short of Jo Jorgensen’s result. 2020 libertarian candidate raised over $3.4 million for her campaign. Chase is currently at 440 thousand dollars, and likely won’t catch up with the 2020 nominee’s result.
Web traffic is also far behind the last two races; Oliver is faring rather badly in comparison to not only Gary Johnson but even Jo Jorgensen. While, he had a lucky streak of going viral as a sound on TikTok, at the very beginning of the campaign, since then the social media presence had limited success across most platforms.
Google Trends Interest: Jo Jorgensen vs. Chase Oliver
What are the reasons for the rather poor campaign performance? One only has to look inside the party for the guilty party.
The Libertarian Clown Cart
The Libertarian Party is bleeding volunteers, donors, and shreds of honour after the Mises Caucus “Takeover” in 2022. LP was hit by a whistleblower scandal, where a private discord of party members was released to the press, unearthing amidst rather juvenile chats proof that the party chair Angela McArdle had trouble making ends meet, around the time she hired her romantic partner with party funds without notifying members of the conflict of interest at hand.
Mises Caucus endorsed Michael Rectenwald for the libertarian presidential candidate, but his support dwindled when he stuttered inebriated with a weed gummy during a pivotal speaking opportunity moments after Trump spoke at the Libertarian National Convention. Once he lost the nomination to Oliver, Rectenwald spiraled on Twitter in antisemitic and homophobic rants, calling Oliver gay slurs, and calling for physical removal of Jews.
Furthermore, to the tacit approval of the Chair of the Libertarian National Committee Angela McArdle, the Colorado Libertarian Party tried to place Kennedy on the ballot instead of Oliver; a charade that was stopped by the party Secretary Caryn Ann Harlos, who herself filed Chase’s candidacy with the state. Subsequently, Harlos was removed from her seat for that very decision, and she has now filed a lawsuit to remove McArdle from the party chair position. At the same time, key figures within the Mises Caucus have been endorsing Donald Trump, and attacking Chase, often concentrating on his sexual orientation.
Ever since the chair of the Libertarian Party has been bordering on sabotaging the campaign. She only endorsed Oliver many days after he was chosen by the delegates, and she did it dressed in a clown garment.
One could be tempted to say that it fits her quite nicely.
(this an unedited frame from McArdle’s “endorsement” of Chase Oliver video (sic))
