Spoilers and Signatures: Ballot Access and Third Party Performance

Third parties and independents face several hurdles to success in the United States because of the two-party system. One of those hurdles is state ballot access laws, which place obstacles in the way of minor candidates that major-party candidates do not face. Research into the phenomenon of third-party performance has shown that third-party candidates do better in non-competitive races when the possibility of causing the spoiler effect is small. But very little research exists to show how much of a difference those requirements make, or if the number of candidates on the ballot is correlated to overall third party support. Using county-level results for the 2016 presidential election, where both major party candidates were historically unpopular, my analysis studying the third-party candidacies of Gary Johnson, Jill Stein and Evan McMullin seems to confirm the hypothesis that third-party candidates usually perform better in non-competitive races than in ones where they could act as a spoiler and that that lessrestrictive ballot access laws increase the number of candidates. However, it seems to reject the hypothesis that the amount of support for third-party voters is not a function of the number of candidates presented to voters.