Who's the Alternative? The Third Party Candidates

According to the RealClearPolitics average of polls, 55.3% of voters have an unfavourable view of Hillary Clinton whilst 58.6% view Donald Trump unfavourably.

In the United States, candidates outside the two major parties (Republican Party and Democratic Party) are generally highly insignificant in general elections. In the last elections, Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party nominee, did the best out of all third party candidates with just a pitiful 0.99% of the vote.

Now that Americans are so disappointed with the two major parties' candidates, perhaps a significant number will genuinely consider the alternative.

So who else is there?

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The Libertarian Party is currently the third largest political party in the United States. Libertarians believe in limited government and freedom of the individual. They support privatisation of industries, lower taxes and limited government spending. This year their candidate is Gary Johnson. Johnson was the 29th governor of New Mexico and served from 1995 to 2003. Johnson's running mate is Bill Weld. Weld, another Republican governor, (Massachusetts' 68th), He served from 1991 to 1997. Johnson and Weld both successfully ran for second terms in their states.

One would imagine that, due to his economic policies of limited government and membership of the Republican party, Johnson could only take significant numbers of votes from conservatives who would otherwise reluctantly back Trump. However, Johnson could potentially steal votes from Clinton too, due to his socially liberal pro-choice and marriage equality stances. A CBS poll has Johnson at 12% but in order to participate in the presidential debates, candidates require at least 15% in the polls. Johnson has raised $3 million but does not begin to compete with Trump's $127 million or Clinton's $435.3 million. Johnson will be on the ballot in all 50 states.

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Another candidate is Dr Jill Stein of the Green Party. Her running mate is human rights activist Ajamu Baraka. Stein unsuccessfully ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002 and 2010. She also ran for the presidency in 2012, winning just 0.4% of the vote. Stein and the Green Party are strongly environmentalist. According to Stein's campaign website, her goal is 100% clean renewable energy by 2030. To put that into perspective, according to Wikipedia, in 2015, under environmentalist President Obama, renewable energy in the United States accounted for 11.1 percent of total energy generation. Stein is also strongly pro-human and animal rights and equality and anti-war.

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Many conservatives within the Republican Party are furious at Trump's nomination as their party's candidate for president. They feel that Trump is not a true conservative and that their party is radically transforming and leaving them behind. They have long been clamouring for a leader and independent candidate of their own. Now their messiah has come in the form of Evan McMullin.

McMullin was born in Provo, Utah and practices the Mormon faith. He was raised in Washington State. McMullin worked for the CIA from 2001 until 2011 in North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia and speaks Arabic. He is strongly conservative but unlike Trump supports "a path to legal residence" for undocumented immigrants once the border is secure, according to his website. Also unlike Trump, McMullin takes the traditionally conservative pro-free trade stance. The closest McMullin has come so far to political office is senior adviser on national security issues for the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in 2013 and chief policy director of the House Republican Conference in 2015. The only state McMullin has a fairly good chance at winning is the deeply conservative and Mormon Utah.

At the time of the writing of this article, none of the third party candidates seems to have a shot at participating in the presidential debates.