While the Green Party of the United States is nearly synonymous with Ralph Nader's 2000 presidential run, the Green Party has run candidates in each of the the past five presidential elections with varying degrees of success.
The color code for the maps is split into three distinct parts: grey represents zero votes, something that has only occurred when the Green Party is not on the ballot, purple represents 0-5 percent in steps of 0.5, five being the minimum needed for matching federal funding, and green represents 5-15 percent in steps of 1, fifteen being the (current) minimum needed to get onto the main debate stage. As such anything above 0 votes would be purple and anything above 5 percent would be green.
The maps are my own, the history is a mix of my own information and the information at
the Green Party's own website. Presidential results are the official FEC results, gubernatorial are USElectionAtlas results.
1996:Ralph Nader — 684,871 votes, 0.71%[1] After forming in 1984, the American Green Party found moderate success, winning nine elected seats in 1990, 3.37% of
the 1990 gubernatorial election in Alaska (6,563 votes), and 10.26% of
the 1994 gubernatorial vote in New Mexico (47,990 votes). Following this, the Green Party met in 1995 to discuss a presidential run. It was finally settled on that Ralph Nader, consumer advocate and progressive activist, would run for the presidency. With a budget of only 5,000 dollars and ballot access in only 22 states (differs from map because of write-in status), Nader won fourth place behind Clinton, Dole, and Perot.
2000:Ralph Nader — 2,882,995 votes, 2.74%[2] By far the most recognizable of the five elections, Ralph Nader's 2000 run was far more successful. Whether it be from disgruntled Perot voters choosing him as the third party alternative, his national name recognition, the weakness of the two major candidates, or any other reason, Nader found himself on the minds of many voters. Nader won over five percent of the vote in nine states and the District of Columbia, and over ten percent in the state of Alaska. Partially because of this strength, he is often viewed as a spoiler candidate who took the win away from the Democrat, Al Gore. While this is mostly because of how close the Florida ended up being, the states of Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, and Wisconsin all also gave less than 50 percent of the vote to the winning candidate. This was the first (and last) election where the Green Party candidate placed third, after both major parties.
2004:David Cobb — 119,859 votes, 0.10%[3] 2004 holds the record for being the worst year for the Greens in their history as a national party. Receiving less votes than the Constitution Party, the Greens fell to a humiliating sixth place. This was because of two main reasons: Nader had left the party, running as an independent and absorbing much of what was left of the Green vote (and again winning third place, albeit with far less votes than in 2000), and many other voters felt like casting their ballot for the Green Party in 2000 had helped Bush win a second term.
2008:Cynthia McKinney — 161,603 votes, 0.12%[4] 2004-2008 was the Greens' recovery period. While at the presidential level McKinney still won only sixth place (seventh if you lump scattered write-ins together), she did improve slightly from Cobb's 2004 numbers. Far more important for the party were the more local races, where Greens were able to win 66 victories nationwide. Greens also saw strong performances in the
2006 Maine gubernatorial race, where candidate Patricia LaMarche won 9.56 percent of the vote (52,690 votes), and the
2006 Illinois gubernatorial race, where candidate Rich Whitney won 10.36 percent of the vote (361,336 votes) (*sidenote: Whitney's strong Illinois campaign makes him the strongest Green Party candidate for any statewide office. He also was able to get more than double McKinney's national votes during her campaign two years later*).
2012:Jill Stein — 469,627 votes, 0.36%[5] The 2012 election for the Greens was important for two main reasons. First, the election acted as the final step of recovery for the Green Party. Stein's 2012 run rivaled Nader's in 1996. She received roughly 2/3 of his votes and about half of his percentage, and got above one percent of the vote in two states, Maine and Oregon. Secondly, without Nader running as an independent, the Green Party was able to pull back much of its base The combination of Nader staying out and the Greens regaining support put the Green Party back in fourth place, losing to the Democrats, Republicans, and Libertarians.
2016:Jill Stein — 0 votes, 0.00%
While the election has not happened yet, Stein's 2016 campaign for the Green Party looks like it may beat Nader's 2000 numbers.
RealClearPolitics' polling agrigate shows Stein currently polling at 3.3 percent, and if that holds, would put her up more than half a percent over Nader. This is overshadowed somewhat by the fact that the Libertarians, another minor party, hold nearly triple that average at nine percent.
