List of United States major third-party and independent presidential tickets

This is a list of major third party and independent tickets for President of the United States and Vice President of the United States.

Criteria

The presidential candidates are listed here based on three criteria:

• They were not members of one of the six major parties in U.S. history: the Federalist Party, the Democratic-Republican Party, the National Republican Party, the Whig Party, the Democratic Party, and the Republican Party^[1] at the time of their candidacy. Independent candidates are included.
• They either received at least one electoral vote from an elector who was not a faithless elector, or they received at least one percent of the national popular vote in an election held after the national popular vote began to be recorded in 1824.^[2]
• They ran after the ratification of the Twelfth Amendment in 1804.^[a]

List of tickets

Election	Candidate[2][3]						Vote[2][3]		Running mate
	Candidate		Party		Office[b]	Home state[c]	PV%	EV%
1832	William Wirt		Anti-Masonic		Fmr. Attorney General	MD	7.8%	2.4%	Amos Ellmaker
	John Floyd		Nullifier		Governor	VA	0%	3.8%	Henry Lee
1844	James G. Birney		Liberty		Fmr. state legislator	MI	2.3%	0%	Thomas Morris
1848	Martin Van Buren		Free Soil		Fmr. President	NY	10.1%	0%	Charles F. Adams Sr.
1852	John P. Hale				Senator	NH	4.9%	0%	George W. Julian
1856	Millard Fillmore[d]		American		Fmr. President	NY	21.5%	2.7%	Andrew J. Donelson
1860	John C. Breckinridge[e]		Southern Democratic		Vice President	KY	18.2%	23.8%	Joseph Lane
	John Bell		Constitutional Union		Fmr. Senator	TN	12.6%	12.9%	Edward Everett
1880	James B. Weaver		Greenback		Representative	IA	3.4%	0%	Barzillai J. Chambers
1884	John St. John		Prohibition		Fmr. Governor	KS	1.5%	0%	William Daniel
	Benjamin Butler		Greenback		Fmr. Governor	MA	1.3%	0%	Absolom M. West
1888	Clinton B. Fisk		Prohibition		General	NJ	2.2%	0%	John A. Brooks
	Alson Streeter		Union Labor		State legislator	IL	1.3%	0%	Charles E. Cunningham
1892	James B. Weaver		Populist		Fmr. Representative	IA	8.5%	5%	James G. Field
	John Bidwell		Prohibition		Fmr. Representative	CA	2.2%	0%	James B. Cranfill
1900	John G. Woolley				Attorney	IL	1.5%	0%	Henry B. Metcalf
1904	Eugene V. Debs		Socialist		Fmr. state legislator	IN	3.0%	0%	Ben Hanford
	Silas C. Swallow		Prohibition		Minister	PA	1.9%	0%	George W. Carroll
1908	Eugene V. Debs		Socialist		Fmr. state legislator	IN	2.8%	0%	Ben Hanford
	Eugene W. Chafin		Prohibition		Attorney	IL	1.7%	0%	Aaron S. Watkins
1912	Theodore Roosevelt		Progressive[f]		Fmr. President	NY	27.4%	16.6%	Hiram Johnson
	Eugene V. Debs		Socialist		Fmr. state legislator	IN	6.0%	0%	Emil Seidel
	Eugene W. Chafin		Prohibition		Attorney	IL	1.7%	0%	Aaron S. Watkins
1916	Allan L. Benson		Socialist		Journalist	NY	3.2%	0%	George R. Kirkpatrick
	Frank Hanly		Prohibition		Fmr. Governor	IN	1.2%	0%	Ira Landrith
1920	Eugene V. Debs		Socialist		Fmr. state legislator	IN	3.4%	0%	Seymour Stedman
1924	Robert La Follette		Progressive[f]		Senator	WI	16.6%	2.4%	Burton K. Wheeler
1932	Norman Thomas		Socialist		Minister	NY	2.2%	0%	James H. Maurer
1936	William Lemke		Union		Representative	NY	1.9%	0%	Thomas C. O'Brien
1948	Strom Thurmond		States' Rights		Governor	SC	2.4%	7.3%	Fielding L. Wright
	Henry A. Wallace		Progressive[f]		Fmr. Vice President	IA	2.4%	0%	Glen H. Taylor
1968	George Wallace		American Independent		Fmr. Governor	AL	13.5%	8.6%	Curtis LeMay
1972	John G. Schmitz				Representative	CA	1.4%	0%	Thomas J. Anderson
1980	John B. Anderson		Independent		Representative	IL	6.6%	0%	Patrick Lucey
	Ed Clark		Libertarian		Attorney	CA	1.1%	0%	David Koch
1992	Ross Perot		Independent		Businessman	TX	18.9%	0%	James Stockdale
1996			Reform				8.4%	0%	Pat Choate
2000	Ralph Nader		Green		Attorney	CT	2.7%	0%	Winona LaDuke
2016	Gary Johnson		Libertarian		Fmr. Governor	NM	3.3%	0%	William Weld
	Jill Stein		Green		Physician	MA	1.1%	0%	Ajamu Baraka
2020	Jo Jorgensen		Libertarian		Professor	SC	1.2%	0%	Spike Cohen

See also

• List of people who received an electoral vote in the United States Electoral College
• List of unsuccessful major party candidates for President of the United States

Notes

1. Third parties did not emerge prior to the ratification of the Twelfth Amendment, but several individuals without a clear partisan affiliation won electoral votes between 1789 and 1796. See list of people who received an electoral vote in the United States Electoral College.
2. The most recent elective office, or senior appointive position, held by the candidate when the presidential election was held. If the candidate had never held an elective office or senior appointive position at the time of the election, then their profession is listed.
3. State of primary residence.
4. After the collapse of the Whig Party in the mid-1850s, the Republican Party and the American Party emerged as the major challengers to the Democratic Party. By 1856, neither the Republican nor the American Party had truly supplanted the Whig Party as the second major political party in the United States.^[4] Nonetheless, the American Party is frequently described as a third party.^[5][6][7] In 1856, the American Party, along with a rump convention of Whigs, nominated a presidential ticket led by former President Millard Fillmore.^[8] After the 1856 election, the Republican Party firmly established itself as one of the two major parties alongside the Democratic Party, while the American Party collapsed.^[9]
5. The Democratic Party fractured along sectional lines in 1860 and held multiple national conventions. The Northern Democrats nominated Stephen A. Douglas and the Southern Democrats nominated Vice President John C. Breckinridge.^[10][11] Many sources include Breckinridge as a third party candidate,^[12][3][13] but other sources do not.^[14][2]
6. Though the Progressive Party of 1912, the Progressive Party of 1924, and the Progressive Party of 1948 shared names and an affiliation with the progressive movement, they were three distinct political parties.^[15]

References

1. Blake, Aaron (April 27, 2016). "Why are there only two parties in American politics?". Washington Post. Retrieved 18 September 2018.
2. "Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996". National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved 16 September 2018.
3. "United States Presidential Election Results". Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. Retrieved 16 September 2018.
4. McPherson (1988), pp. 140–144, 153–154
5. Cooper, William. "James Buchanan: Campaigns and Elections". Miller Center. University of Virginia. Retrieved September 19, 2018.
6. Boissoneault, Lorraine (January 26, 2017). "How the 19th-Century Know Nothing Party Reshaped American Politics". Smithsonian. Retrieved September 19, 2018.
7. Hicks (1933), p. 10
8. Holt (2010), pp. 91–94
9. Gienapp (1985), p. 547
10. Smith (1975), pp. 106–113
11. VandeCreek, Drew E. "Campaign of 1860". Northern Illinois University Libraries. Retrieved September 19, 2018.
12. Patch, B. W. (1936). "Third Party Movements in American Politics". CQPress. Retrieved 19 September 2018.
13. Rosenstone et al. (2018), pp. 59–63
14. Hicks (1933), pp. 3–28
15. Rosenstone et al. (2018), p. 93

Works cited

• Gienapp, William E. (1985). "Nativism and the Creation of a Republican Majority in the North before the Civil War". The Journal of American History. 72 (3): 529–555. doi:10.2307/1904303. JSTOR 1904303.
• Hicks, John D. (1933). "The Third Party Tradition in American Politics". The Mississippi Valley Historical Review. 20 (1): 3–28. doi:10.2307/1902325. JSTOR 1902325.
• Holt, Michael F. (2010). Franklin Pierce. Times Books. ISBN 978-0-8050-8719-2.
• McPherson, James M. (1988). Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199743902.
• Rosenstone, Steven J.; Behr, Roy L.; Lazarus, Edward H. (2018). Third Parties in America: Citizen Response to Major Party Failure (2nd ed.). Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691190525.
• Smith, Elbert B. (1975). The Presidency of James Buchanan. University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0-7006-0132-5.