ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
President-elect Donald Trump has run for president in the past three elections. And in 2024, third-party presidential candidates got fewer votes than at any other point in the Trump era of presidential politics. This is despite widespread dissatisfaction with Republican and Democratic nominees for much of the campaign cycle. NPR's Stephen Fowler has been covering third parties this year for us, and he reports Donald Trump himself is actually a big reason for that decline. Good morning, Stephen.
STEPHEN FOWLER, BYLINE: Good morning.
SCHMITZ: So Trump won the popular vote but did not clear 50%. How many votes did third-party campaigns earn in this election cycle?
FOWLER: So not that many, relatively speaking, Rob. Out of about 154 million ballots cast, less than 2% went to someone not named Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. Green Party nominee Jill Stein did the best, with just about 800,000 votes. Then came Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who actually removed his name from most every competitive swing state ballot - literally told people, do not vote for me - but he earned slightly fewer votes than that. The Libertarian Party nominee, Chase Oliver, earned just about 640,000 votes, which is notable, considering the Libertarian Party's the third-largest political party and usually the most common alternative.
SCHMITZ: Wow. So that's a sharp decline since 2016 when the Libertarian Party earned 3% of the vote. What happened there?
FOWLER: Well, none of this is actually surprising when you look under the hood at how Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Libertarian Party apparatus both shifted to support Trump and oppose Democrats the closer we got to the election. At the Libertarian Party convention this summer, both RFK and Trump spoke. They tried to court the party's endorsement and favor. The party instead nominated Chase Oliver, a gay anti-war activist more on the progressive end of the libertarian spectrum. When I talked to Oliver earlier this month, he said Kennedy's decision to leave the race also took a lot of interest in third-party candidates along with him. Plus, he had to deal with his own party's politics that took a hard right turn towards Trump.
CHASE OLIVER: I personally did not feel a lot of support (laughter) from the national party. I felt like there was a lot of antagonism, particularly because a lot of - want to just throw in our votes for Trump because he made a lot of promises to libertarians.
FOWLER: And one of those promises, Rob, was to put a Libertarian in his cabinet.
SCHMITZ: I mean, so far, there are no Libertarians in Trump's next cabinet. But there is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been tapped to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Is his appointment a victory for voters interested in third-party options moving forward?
FOWLER: Well, some of the Libertarians call it a win, though RFK is not a Libertarian.
SCHMITZ: Right.
FOWLER: Beyond Kennedy, though, Chase Oliver says Trump's picks show his compatriots have been bamboozled.
OLIVER: I'm going to say right now, based on his foreign policy picks and cabinet picks so far - not paying out for the Libertarians, especially in terms of foreign policy. We are an anti-war, anti-interventionist party.
FOWLER: The reality is Trump picking RFK Jr. is a mark of loyalty for Kennedy dropping out of the race and endorsing him. It's also an acknowledgment of the sizable overlap and the shared ideology between Trump's base and RFK's base around health. But in some ways, it does validate the idea that it is possible to exist outside the two-party system, have your voice be heard and gain concessions from whoever ultimately ends up being in power.
SCHMITZ: That is NPR's Stephen Fowler in Atlanta. Stephen, thank you.
FOWLER: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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