Where Do Independent Hopefuls Go From Here

With the election now over and the historic victory of Barack Obama now behind us. We now ask the question where does the Independent voters go from here?
Roughly 18 million Americans who claimed to have independent views in terms of politics voted for the president-elect. That equates to roughly 29% of the electorate. Showing us that the independent movement has moved away from a more conservative ideology that it represented in the early 90's and become more liberal here in the 21st century. When we look at the numbers from the past elections this statement is reinforced.
In the last three elections, the leading independent parties has been the Green and Libertarian, both of which have shown to have very liberal viewpoints. In 2000, Ralph Nader, who then ran under the Green Party received 2,882,955 votes, that would be the highest total for a independent party since Ross Perot in 1992. The following two elections it would be the Libertarian parities with 384,431 in 2000 and 397,265 in 2004. In this last election that party would see a dramatic increase in their vote totals with over 500,000.
Despite the surge by the Libertarian party from 2004 to 2008, they were overshadowed in both elections by Ralph Nader, who each time received roughly 100,000 more votes than the Libertarians. However all that appears to be changing.
In our last post we discussed the inevitable fall of Ralph Nader after free falling voting numbers and recent racist remarks about Obama. With Nader apparently out of the way, the Libertarian should in essence see a dramatic increase once again in the 2012 election in total popular votes. Nader and the Libertarian party both had very similar ideals which should mean most Nader voters will easily make the transition in voting for the Libertarian candidate in 2012. With no real competition from any one party in the previous two elections, the Libertarian party should continue to grow.
Overall, any independent party still has a long ways to go before they even make an influence like the one Ross Perot made in 1992, let alone win a Presidency. However in another decade or two that idea may change dramatically. You never know when a popular public figure with enough money to compete with the Republican and Democrats may spring out of no where much like Perot did.
If this election has shown us anything and given any hope to third party backers, it's that the political landscape of this nation can change in the course of three to four decades. After all back in the 1960's and 1970's who would of thought we would now have an African American President.
(independentvoting.org)

-Ip