By Steve Harrison for WFAE

North Carolina’s presidential ballot is likely to be the most crowded in at least 50 years.

U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle last week ordered the state Board of Elections to place progressive academic Cornel West’s Justice For All party on the ballot. That brings the number of certified parties to seven — assuming the state doesn’t challenge the ruling requiring it to certify Justice For All.

The Democratic-majority elections board had sided with the North Carolina Democratic Party and other Democratic-aligned groups, who alleged Justice For All’s petition was fraudulent. The same outcome happened two years ago when Democrats unsuccessfully challenged the Green Party’s petition signatures to gain recognition.

Ballot fights can get ugly: Italo Medelius, Justice For All’s North Carolina organizer, accused one of those groups, the Clear Choice Action PAC, of using “mafioso tactics” to stop the petition drive.

In addition to the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates on the ballot, there are set to be five others:

• We The People Party, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

• Libertarian Party, Chase Oliver

• Constitution Party, Randall Terry

• Green Party, Jill Stein

• Justice For All, Cornel West

Of those five, two parties pull from the right side of the political spectrum: Libertarian and Constitution.

Two are from the left: Green and Justice For All.

National polling often shows that RFK Jr. — despite his famous last name — may be pulling more from Donald Trump than Kamala Harris.

Will all these choices mean more people choose to cast a protest vote? Or will their candidates just divvy up the existing third-party vote amongst themselves?

With North Carolina competitive again now that Kamala Harris is the Democratic nominee, those are important questions. Trump won the state by only 73,000 votes four years ago, or 1.3%.

First, here is the non-two-party share of the vote in recent federal elections, including write-ins. I have also included which third parties were on the ballot:

2022 Senate: 2.2% (Libertarian, Green)

2020: 1.5% (Libertarian, Green, Constitution)

2018: (No statewide federal race)

2016: 4% (Libertarian)

2014 Senate: 3.9% (Libertarian)

2012: 1.3% (Libertarian)

2010 Senate: 2.1% (Libertarian)

2008: 0.9% (Libertarian)

2006 (No statewide federal race)

2004: 0.3% (Libertarian)

You have to go back to 1996 to find a third-party candidate who got a big chunk of votes. That’s when Ross Perot received 7%. Four years earlier, he got 14%.

If you go back a generation, George Wallace grabbed 31% in 1968.

Catawba College political science professor Michael Bitzer said he doesn’t think 2024 will be like 2016, when the total Libertarian and write-in vote was 4%. Biden’s decision not to run for reelection may have dampened the appeal of third-party candidates on the left.

“2016 saw general unhappiness with the two major party candidates, and that led to a significant showing (still in low single-digits) of third-party candidates in North Carolina,” he said.

Bitzer said if West were to get 1% — roughly 50,000 votes — that could make a difference.

“But West getting 50,000 votes would be a significant overperformance of left-leaning third parties in this state. Green Party candidates got less than 15,000 votes in 2016 and 2020 in N.C., and I don’t see West’s infrastructure having the capability to build more than that at this point without a major cash infusion and on-the-ground infrastructure.”

A few other thoughts/questions about the bounty of third-party options, or should we say third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh:

• While the Green Party did poorly in 2020 with 0.2% of the vote, it had a relatively strong showing in the 2022 U.S. Senate race. Matthew Hoh received just under 30,000 votes, or 0.8%.

Can that be replicated in a presidential year, by either Stein or West? Or a combination of them both?

If so, that’s a significant chunk of votes.

(The Libertarian, Shannon Bray, received nearly 52,000 votes, or 1.4%, in 2022.)

• Does West have any sizable constituency of his own? Or will he just be another option for dissatisfied progressives? 

And does West, who is Black, pull African American voters from Harris?

• North Carolina only has one competitive congressional race. That’s the 1st District in the rural northeast. Democratic incumbent Don Davis is running against Republican Laurie Buckhout.

There is, however, a Libertarian in the race, Tom Bailey. Could that swing the race to Davis?

The preceding article originally appeared on August 19, 2024 at WFAE’s website and is made available here for educational purposes only. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 106A-117 of the U.S. Copyright Law.