If you search Google for “election results,” as millions of people are doing on Tuesday evening, four names come up in a chart at the top of the page. Kamala Harris and Donald J. Trump, of course. Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate who is fairly well known for her 2016 run. And Chase Oliver — or, as many Americans are likely to say, who?
Mr. Oliver is the Libertarian Party candidate for president. He narrowly won the party’s nomination at its convention in May, through a series of votes that almost resulted in no nominee at all because delegates were so divided.
Compared with some of the candidates he beat out, Mr. Oliver — who used to be a Democrat — represents a left-leaning segment of the Libertarian Party, though some of his positions are conservative. He has said he became politically active as an opponent of the Iraq war and has described himself as “armed and gay.”
Mr. Oliver opposes essentially all restrictions on guns, wants to abolish the Department of Education and supports a constitutional amendment to require balanced federal budgets — positions much closer to Republicans than to Democrats. But he also supports abortion rights (at the state level), opposes Israel’s war in Gaza and wants to legalize marijuana, positions more commonly associated with Democrats.
In 2022, he ran for a Senate seat in Georgia and received about 2 percent of the vote, leading to a runoff between Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, and Herschel Walker, a Republican. (Mr. Warnock won.)
The Libertarian Party is on ballots in a majority of states, but Mr. Oliver is polling in the low single digits, as is normal for third-party candidates. It remains to be seen whether his small share of the vote will affect the outcome of the race between Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump, and if so, in which direction.
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