voters ranking Perot highest, 79 percent voted for him but 21 percent defected. There is also the phenomenon of “protest” voting for third-party candidates. Gallup polls revealed that in 1992, 5 percent of Perot’s voters said they would not vote for him if they thought he could win. Third parties and independent candidates also face a potentially daunting postelection problem in the event they are successful in winning the presidency. This, of course, is the problem of governing — staffing an administration and then working with a Congress dominated by Republicans and Democrats who would have only limited incentives to cooperate with a non-major-party president. John F. Bibby is a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and is the former chairman of the American Political Science Association’s political parties subfield. An authority on U.S. politics and government, Bibby has authored Politics, Parties, and Elections in America. ...
