Protest Voting

Presidential Elections

The most often-quoted instances of protest voting take place in presidential elections. In the 1992 U.S. presidential election, the popular vote was divided between Bill Clinton (42.9 percent), George H.W Bush (37.1 percent), and Independent Ross Perot (18.8 percent). Many of the votes received by Ross Perot were seen as protest votes. Public opinion research have shown that Perot supporters were more likely than the voters choosing [Page 683]the others two candidates to mistrust the government and to fear public officials' corruption. Although Perot succeeded in attracting new voters to the political process, he also took away votes from the two major parties. Some claimed that he disproportionately hurt Bush, therefore allowing Clinton to win the election, however his overall impact on the outcome is difficult to assess. In the extremely close 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, Ralph Nader, a candidate for the Green Party, received many thousands of votes that otherwise likely would have been cast for Gore. In Florida alone, Nader received 97,421 votes. Bush won Florida by a mere 537 votes, giving him the electoral votes needed to win the presidency. Most political analysts believe that these protest votes for Nader cost Gore the presidency, because the vast majority of these votes would have gone to Gore, the more liberal feasible alternative, had Nader not been on the ballot.

Protest voting is not limited to the United States. Presidential runoff elections, common to many democracies around the world, highlight another remarkable feature of this form of protest. Sometimes, dissatisfied electors vote in the first round for a marginal candidate, who every so often makes a surprising appearance into the second round, only to have voters turn against him or her in the run-off. There might be a political cultural dimension associated with this behavior, as voters in some countries, such as France, resort to it frequently as a protest mechanism, while voters in other democracies might choose a different form of protest.

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