Since 1996, third-party candidates have tried and repeatedly failed to cross the CPD's threshold — 15 percent support in an average of polls. In the relatively short history of televised presidential debates, only one third-party candidate ever shared a stage with the Democrat and Republican. There were no televised debates in 1968, the last year that a third-party candidate won electoral votes. In the meantime, Johnson and Stein have gotten considerably greater media attention than any third-party candidates since 2000. A long-shot lawsuit by the Libertarian and Green Party candidates for president has been tossed out by a federal judge, lowering the odds of a third-party candidate making it into this year's televised debates.

Source: Washington Post August 05, 2016 18:13 UTC