What about Badnarik?

Someone has probably mentioned this before, but the Votemaster at http://www.electoral-vote.com made mention here of a poll in New Mexico which had the following, surprising results:

Kerry: 50%
Bush: 43%
Badnarik: 5%

Badnarik, of course, is the Libertarian Party candidate for President. He's rarely included in state polls or national polls. I'll let the Votemaster tell the rest of the story:

"If pollsters regularly asked Kerry/Bush/Badnarik instead of Kerry/Bush/Nader, Badnarik might do better. That might actually affect the election since Nader sucks votes almost entirely from Kerry whereas Badnarik is much more of an equal-opportunity gadfly drawing from both sides. Could the questions asked by the pollsters actually change the election results?"

Could it be that people are simply naming a third choice regardless of who it is? Or could it be that Badnarik is actually a major factor in this election?

that not only will Badnarik fail MISERABLY (around .1%) due to lack of media coverage, i think that poll was conducted by a Libertarian group.

but done by Rasmussen.

That's what I get for scanning a paragraph. :P

but Libertarians always fail in the election but never fail to get a lot of votes. They're on the ballot everywhere and they get about one percent of the vote, unless I'm mistaken. Anbody got numbers? Libertarians do not draw evenly from both parties--they draw almost as heavily from Repubs as Greens do from Dems. American-style Libertarians focus, traditionally, on taxes, guns and other right=wing issues. Now, they've expanded their potential net by going anti-war but generally anti-war Libertarians will be from the Pat Buchanon isolationist mode, not the Naderite mold.

Florida was lost by 500-some votes. Libertarians pull more than that in most states (I suspect).

the five percent for Badnarik isn't bullsh*t

Two party politics is a recipe for one dimensional, extremely polarized and divided electorates.

who don't like the tax thing, the deficit thing and the Iraq thing, but who would never vote for Kerry will vote Libertarian.

A few tens of thousands of votes here and there in the right place could be significant.

A lot of conservatives are sick of shrub (they started to notice a few things) but they won't vote for a Democrat, so the obvious protest vote is Libertarian.

I think the Libertarian ticket this year is a bigger problem for shrub than Nader is for Kerry.

...and she'd never think of voting for the repubs. If anything, I'd love to see a more socially libertine democrat run, then we'd see some of the Libertarians jumping ship.