ABSTRACT
The emergence of smaller political parties in the United States has been an early indicator of political change. Aside from better-known Green, Libertarian, and Natural Law Parties, two hundred other ideologically diverse local, regional, and national minor political parties were active in 2003. As of 2000, ten US presidents had been elected with only a minority of the popular vote; of those ten, four became president with less than a plurality. No minor party has won the White House since 1860. That year, Abraham Lincoln received 39.8 percent of the popular vote and 59.4 of the electoral votes in an election with four strong candidates. More than 130 years later, Reform Party supporters in fifty states and the District of Columbia cast 19,741,065 popular votes for H. Ross Perot in 1992. Members of one of the two major parties usually became state governors during the twentieth century. Jesse Ventura was an exception to the pattern.
