Who Votes for Non-Major-Party Candidates? The Cases of Longley, Sanders, and Weicker

This article focuses on one aspect of the current decline of partisan voting behavior in contemporary American politics, the rise in voting for non-major-party candidates. Careful study of the electoral coalitions supporting Governor James Longley of Maine in 1974, Governor Lowell Weicker of Connecticut in 1990, and U.S. Representative Bernard Sanders of Vermont in 1990, shows that they are not the product of an "alternative culture" of voters who consistently support non-major-party candidates, but are assembled by each candidate on the basis of ideology and level of political experience.