By Zachary Gorchow
Executive Editor and Publisher
Posted: September 9, 2014 12:40 PM

The latest poll out today on the governor’s and U.S. Senate races has a unique twist – it includes the third party candidates running for those offices.

And the inclusion of Libertarian Mary Buzuma, Green Paul Homeniuk and U.S. Taxpayers candidate Mark McFarlin with Republican Governor Rick Snyder and Democrat Mark Schauer in the governor’s race, as well as Libertarian Jim Fulner, Green Chris Wahmhoff and U.S. Taxpayers candidate Richard Matkin in the U.S. Senate race had an interesting effect on the survey.

When all candidates were included in the survey from Public Policy Polling, Mr. Snyder had 43 percent, Mr. Schauer 42 percent, Ms. Buzuma 3 percent, Mr. McFarlin 2 percent and Mr. Homeniuk 1 percent. The third party candidates’ combined support is 6 percent.

In the U.S. Senate race, Democratic U.S. Rep. Gary Peters had 43 percent, Republican Terri Land 36 percent, Mr. Fulner 4 percent, Mr. Matkin 2 percent and Mr. Wahmhoff 1 percent. The third party candidates’ combined support is 7 percent.

But when the survey asked participants only about the major party candidates, Mr. Snyder had 46 percent to 44 percent for Mr. Schauer and Mr. Peters had 45 percent to 40 percent for Ms. Land.

On the one hand, it only seems fair to include all the candidates in the poll. They’re on the ballot too.

But the history of third party candidates in statewide major races in Michigan suggests there is absolutely no chance they will combine for 6 to 7 percent of the vote.

In averaging the last seven governor’s and U.S. Senate races combined in Michigan since 2002, the average combined vote for third party candidates was 2.08 percent with a high water mark of 3.51 percent in the 2008 U.S. Senate race.

Going back a bit further, the best third party combined performance in recent memory was in the 1994 U.S. Senate race when they combined for 5.3 percent, almost entirely thanks to Libertarian Jon Coon getting 4.2 percent of the vote.

Polls are just a snapshot in time, of course, and some people are saying now that they will vote for one of the third party candidates. But as almost always happens, once Election Day arrives, most voters opt to choose a candidate that has a chance to win and third party support plummets. Of course, with as relentlessly negative as the governor and U.S. Senate races are, perhaps a few more protest votes than usual are possible.

In the end, the third party vote will land somewhere between 1 and 3.5 percent, meaning that while today’s poll questions including them are interesting, they are not instructive.