In US politics, they have always had a two-party system. This makes it difficult for anyone outside the Democrats or Republicans to hold office or have members within the White House establishment. However, there are certain years and elections where minor parties have had an impact within US politics than other events.
On a national base, it is rarely that minor parties have an impact on US politics, but they are able to make an impact on regular basis within smaller levels such as regional or state-based. This is because of the two-party system making the minor parties unimportant, and difficult to contribute or get noticed. Although, at local politics/city councils level it can be important for when minor parties run for mayor or governor; an example of this would be in 2010 when Tom Tancredo (Constitution Party) was in the race for governor of Colorado. Due to his success of becoming second, he is thinking of re-running in later this year.
On the other hand, there are some parties such as Reform Party, Libertarian and Green Party that are known to have an impact on US politics nationwide and make significant impact too. All three parties were able to be put on the ballots in all 50 states ballots in 2000. This is an extremely rare chance and complicated process that the parties had to go through to be able to be on the ballot. States such as New York make it incredibly hard for minor parties to get their party on the ballot as it is a big and populated state. Minor parties can also be split into two categories which consist of permanent and temporary. This affects the way; to what extent they have an impact on US politics. Permanent minor parties such as Green party would have more of an impact on US politics than temporary parties such as the Reform Party.
Despite this, in recent elections minor parties have had a huge impact on US politics; from 1968 when George Wallace from the Independent Party received a large 13.5% of the popular vote. Although this was a large success for a minor party like the Independent Party, for the majority of the public it can be seen as distorting the results as it split the Democrats votes, which lead to a Republican victory. This is also similar to a more recent election that also caused a controversy was the 2000 Bush Vs Gore election. Ralph Nader was the Green Party’s candidate that gained 2.7% of the popular vote, which were almost 3 million votes. Although he had gained a massive amount of votes from the popular vote, he was also criticized after for “stealing” the Democrats votes which lead to another Republican victory. Since Gore did receive more popular votes than Bush, but it was the Electoral College votes that established Bush’s victory, this made the Democrats even more upset with Ralph Nader.
To conclude, on a daily basis minor parties only have major impacts on US politics at regional/local levels rather than nation-wide due to the two-party system. On the contrary, at important events such as elections, minor parties are able to have a large impact on the US politics as they are able to also get involved such as being on the ballots and receiving votes.
