With an intensity in the electorate not seen in some time, 2020 looks to have been a hard year for Libertarians to break through in the statewide races in which they ran. And yet they may have played a bigger role than ever.
After a 2016 when former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson capitalized on some uneasiness with the two major candidates and received more than 125,000 votes, totaling up to 3% of the final tally, this year presidential candidate Jo Jorgensen received just above 61,000 – despite there being nearly a million more votes total for the three major candidates.
Jorgensen is from Illinois and a psychology professor at Clemson University but had a difficult time breaking through with media coverage in an intense year for news, with enthusiasm around the other two presidential candidates – and not to mention that whole virus thing. Overall, Jorgensen did get the highest amount of votes for a Libertarian nominee ever with 1.6 million votes across the country. And in a race that may come down to several thousand votes across just one or two states – every vote counts.
The more straightforward Senate race with David Perdue and Jon Ossoff and Libertarian candidate Shane Hazel was a big drop-off from the showing of Libertarian Allen Buckley in 2016 against Johnny Isakson and Jim Barksdale, when Buckley got just over 4%, with 162,000 votes. In a race that had more than a million votes more than 2016, Hazel only got 113,000 votes – as of Thursday evening – totaling 2.3%. Again though, a healthy percentage of those votes going to Perdue may have pushed him over that 50% +1 mark that would have seen him avoid a imminent runoff.
Brian Slowinski, the Libertarian candidate in the jungle primary that featured sitting Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler, Republican Rep. Doug Collins and Democrat Raphael Warnock, Slowinski had the unfortunate circumstance of there being plenty of other options for people to vote for who did not want to vote for either the D or R candidates. Normal ballot restrictions are a little different in the jungle primary so this race featured multiple independent candidates, a Green party candidate, and numerous other Republicans or Democrats who also got many votes. Some twenty candidates got more than 10,000 votes, with Slowinski getting just over 35,000.
Unfortunately for the Libertarians, 11 candidates got more votes than that.
Libertarians are frequently targeted by enthusiastic supporters of either Democrats or Republicans – often Republicans – for their “diversion” of votes. Hazel even posted a few of these on his Facebook page, including the passionate “May you ROIT IN HELL”, accompanied with several one-fingered salute emojis. Libertarians often relish this characterization, Hazel said that this is proof that both parties “work off of fear-based voting for power.”
Data has shown that the idea Libertarians draw exclusively from one party appears to be inconclusive. Jorgensen says that her support comes from both parties, with Democrats who want to bring troops home from overseas and Republicans concerned about the national debt.
With 2020 being a major letdown from 2016, it continues to look like Libertarians and Gary Johnson missed a major opportunity that year that may not come along again in some time.
