ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, November 7, 1996 TAG: 9611070045
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: COMPILED BY DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
Minor party candidates for president scored a moral victory in Tuesday's voting.
Besides Ross Perot, who finished with 8 percent of the vote, other third-party candidates accounted for 2 percent of the vote nationwide - some 1.4 million in all.
That's the most votes "alternative" candidates have received since 1980.
The two strongest minor party candidates were consumer advocate Ralph Nader, the Green Party nominee, and Libertarian Harry Browne, each of whom finished with a full 1 percent of the national totals.
Nader's showing came despite the fact he was only on the ballot in 22 states and had pointedly run a low-budget, no-frills campaign that attracted little attention. Browne was on the ballot in all 50 states.
Nader got 580,940 votes nationwide; Browne took 470,175. They were followed by Howard Phillips, the U.S. Taxpayers Party candidate, with 179,018 votes, and John Hagelin of the Natural Law Party with 109,980.
Nader predicted increased public support for minor party candidates in future elections. ``Third parties are getting more visible,'' he said. ``The aggregate of their votes will begin to affect the margin of victory for the major party candidates.''
The minor-party candidates ran strongest in frontier-minded Alaska, where they accounted for 5 percent of the vote. The Green Party even ran ahead of the Democrats in the Alaska Senate race, although the overall results were lopsided. Republican Ted Stevens polled 76 percent in a landslide re-election, but the Green Party nominee took 13 percent to the Democratic candidate's paltry 11 percent.
A sense of history
This is the first time since 1928 that a Republican Congress has been re-elected; the Republican majority that swept into power with Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 was ousted two years later.
You'll have to go even further back, however, to find a time when Americans have elected a Democratic president and a Republican Congress in the same election. Try 1884, Grover Cleveland's first term.
Milestones
Clinton became the first Democrat to carry Florida since Jimmy Carter in 1976, and the first to win Arizona since Harry Truman pulled it out in 1948. Both victories were attributed, in part, to newcomers who have changed the political landscape of the two Sunbelt states.
Dole, however, reclaimed Georgia, Colorado and Montana, three states that Clinton carried in 1992.
Here to stay?
Ross Perot didn't fare nearly as well as he did in 1992, when he captured about 19 percent of the vote. But because he won more than 5 percent this time - and did so as the nominee of the Reform Party - Perot guaranteed that his fledging party will qualify for a share of federal matching funds in the presidential election of 2000, no matter who its nominee is.
The best, worst
Clinton ran strongest in New England, where he took 62 percent of the vote in Massachusetts and 60 percent in Rhode Island. He ran weakest in the West, where he took 33 percent of the vote in Alaska, 33 percent in Utah and 34 percent in Idaho.
Dole ran strongest in his home state of Kansas and in Utah, taking 54 percent of the vote in both states. His weakest showing was in Rhode Island, with 27 percent.
Perot's best state was Maine, where he won 14 percent; his weakest showing came in a string of Deep South states, where he posted only 6 percent of the vote.
The most lopsided returns were in the District of Columbia, home to three electoral votes: Clinton took 85 percent of the vote there, to 9 percent for Dole and 2 percent for Perot.
The Associated Press and Voter News Service contributed to this story.
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