It’s not just Americans who are disgusted by the choice of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in this year’s presidential election. This morning, I appeared on Canada AM, the morning show of the broadcast network CTV, to talk about Gary Johnson, the former Republican governor of New Mexico and the newly-minted presidential nominee of the Libertarian party, the largest of America’s third parties and the only one on pace to have its nominee appear on the ballot of all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
As I explained on CTV, in 2012 Gary Johnson received more than a million votes, or about one percent of the total, the best showing for a Libertarian presidential candidate since 1980. This year, the former two-term Republican governor of a Democratic state is joined on the ticket by William Weld, another former two-term Republican governor of a Democratic state. Between their credentials and the historically high unfavorability ratings of the presumptive Democratic and Republican nominees, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Libertarians have a major opportunity to do far better this election cycle than ever before.
In polls where Johnson has appeared as a choice, he’s hit about 10 percent. If Johnson can hit 15 percent in five polls, he will be invited to the presidential debates run by the Commission on Presidential Debates. If he hits five percent in the November election, the Libertarian party will qualify for federal matching funds in the 2020 cycle.
As I mentioned in the CTV interview, Libertarians also have a unique opportunity to actually become a major party, especially if the Republican collapse continues long past the Trump nomination. The Libertarian party has already seen its membership double and its revenue quadruple in the Age of Trump. The Libertarian National Committee’s chair, Nicholas Sarwark, believes the LP could become a major party. “The ideal is that we use [the 2016 election] as a springboard to mass defections and the destruction of at least one of the old parties,” he explained. “It’s time for the Republican Party to fall apart and go away,” he added. “Or the Democratic party. I don’t really care which.” Watch Reason TV’s interview of Sarwark here and CTV’s interview of me below:
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