Anticipating Entry

• Author: Daniel J. Lee
• Published date: 01 March 2012
• Date: 01 March 2012
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1065912910391476
• Subject Matter: Articles

Political Research Quarterly

65(1) 138 –150

© 2012 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912910391476

http://prq.sagepub.com

XXX10.1177/1065912910391476LeePolitical Research Quarterly

1Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA

Corresponding Author:

Daniel J. Lee, Michigan State University, Department of Political

Science, 303 South Kedzie Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824

Email: leedan@msu.edu

Anticipating Entry: Major Party

Positioning and Third Party Threat

Daniel J. Lee1

Abstract

Observers of U.S. elections have reason to believe that third parties are not relevant political actors since they rarely

win many votes or influence which major party wins an election. Researchers should use dependent variables besides

vote choice and vote share to find third party effects that are a normal aspect of the American two-party system. A

spatial model of elections motivates the hypothesis that a higher likelihood of third party entry induces greater major

party candidate divergence. An empirical test that uses candidate positioning data in the 1996 U.S. House elections

provides evidence of this third party effect.

Keywords

political parties, third parties, electoral competition, candidate positioning

Throughout its history, the landscape of American poli-

tics has been dominated by two major parties. Only in a

handful of years have third parties appeared to play an

appreciable role in shaping political outcomes, and even

then the discussion is usually limited to presidential elec-

tions.1 One might then conclude that considering only the

major parties sufficiently describes the American two-

party system, aside from rare periods of realignment.

This article instead argues that third parties are an inte-

gral component of the two-party system, and one should

not take their apparent lack of electoral success as an

indication of their irrelevance. Their lack of success may

be, in fact, evidence that they are influencing political

outcomes. This somewhat paradoxical statement is less

puzzling once major party strategic anticipation is con-

sidered: third parties are not successful, in part, because

the major parties take preemptive actions to minimize their

success. This influence on electoral strategies is the third

party effect that is the focus of this article. The logic of

strategic anticipation shows how third parties lend shape

to the two-party competition that we observe, even under

normal political conditions.

The Search for

Third Party Effects

Previous works on third parties tend to focus on their

observed effects on final electoral outcomes, such as

winning a significant percentage of the vote or stealing

enough votes from one major party to flip the outcome of

the election. By these standards, third parties are rarely

important. Rosenstone, Behr, and Lazarus (1996) argue that

their success, in terms of winning votes, is a function of

“major party failure,” which is a condition that is not

regularly met. The two most recent cases of potential

spoiler candidates are considered in two articles. Lacy

and Burden (1999) find that Perot in 1992 was not a

spoiler candidate, contrary to some circles of conven-

tional wisdom, as his candidacy only decreased Clinton’s

margin of victory over Bush. Herron and Lewis (2007)

examine the spoiler effect of Nader in the 2000 presiden-

tial election by analyzing ballots cast in Florida. They

find that although Nader did steal votes from Gore, he

also took nearly as many votes away from Bush. Therefore,

the net gain of votes for Bush was modest, and the extreme

closeness of the race in Florida was a needed condition to

reach the spoiler outcome. Since such tightly contested

elections are extraordinary, one would again conclude

that third parties rarely influence outcomes.

Differing from the cited works above, Rapoport and

Stone (2001, 2005) focus their attention on the actions of

the major parties. They outline a dynamic through which

third parties can have a lasting influence beyond the elec-

tion of their initial success. A third party candidate takes

advantage of major party failure and wins a significant

share of the vote in an initial election. If this candidate

attracts a large and identifiable issue constituency, then