Last night’s debate did nothing to boost America’s confidences in the two major party’s candidates. Both Trump and Clinton came of as unlikeable, with Trump apparently losing to Clinton. But as one CNN poll has pointed out, if people were to choose who to vote for out of the three options given, Clinton may have gotten 34% to Trump’s 18%, but both lost to the ever present choice of…neither. Neither won by 47%.
It’s what Libertarian VP Bill Weld calls “an addressable market,” or so he told Neil Cavuto on Fox Business Tuesday morning, when they talked about the debate.
“The spike on Google searches for Gary Johnson went through the roof last as people were seeing…the manifestation of the two party candidates there,” said Weld.
This is actually very true. In fact, Johnson hit number 6 on Google’s most searched chart with 100,000+ searches, as pointed out by one user on Gary Johnson’s subreddit.
During the debates, when they did search for him, the question on everybody’s mind was where was he, and is there a way to still vote for him.
The fallout of the debates even seemed to spur on voters to like Johnson’s Facebook page, which according to one Reddit user grew 26%. This is highly irregular, as generally there is a bleeding of support from the 3rd party candidates after debates. As it stands, Johnson is currently doing better than Perot did in the 90’s. Given the situation, it’s no surprise that people would be seeking out someone outside the duopoly.
With Jill Stein and Evan McMullin not even coming to close to having the numbers Gary Johnson does, Johnson becomes the next best thing for wayward Republicans and Democrats, and someone who fits the best of both worlds.
With Trump and Clinton losing out to the concept of nothing, and attention toward Johnson spiking, we can clearly see that the gain here was Johnson’s.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member