Where does the "15%" mark come from for Independent candidates?

Factual Questions
1

I know it’s in polls, but what polls? Is voting for Gary Johnson or Jill a worthless vote? I’ve always been confused on how the independent party works, especially in the presidential races. Now it seems I’m going to vote for an independent, but I don’t know how I guess.

Also I should point out this is my first general election I’ve voted in, same goes for the primaries. So I’m totally new to the whole operation, all I know is the independents need a 15% voter turnout in polls.

2

There’s nothing official about these debates. The major parties and the media get together to make up the rules. The major parties obviously want a high threshold for anyone else to join in. And it has an effect on the polling as well, knowing that candidates won’t be at the threshold for the debate will lower the responses for them. The decision to limit candidates to an 11% rating in selected polls is arbitrary.

It’s GQ, I don’t want to make this sound like a political opinion, but the term ‘debate’ is being used for something on the low end of the debate scale. These are group interviews, and the moderators become participants themselves as can be seen by the discussion of their effect before and afterwards. This may be what people want to see, but these are far from the kind of debates Lincoln and Douglas participated in.

3

Gary Johnson and Jill Stein are not independent. They are the nominees for very real but somewhat fringe parties (Libertarian and the Green Party respectively). You can have true Independent candidates that are not affiliated with any party and some even win races at the local and state level but not usually at the Federal level.

There is nothing in the Constitution at all about political parties (many of the Founding Fathers actively opposed them). You don’t have to belong to one to run for any office but it really helps with fundraising and overall organization especially for the federal races which are really just a series of coordinated state races.

The 15% threshold is what is currently needed to be allowed into some debates. There is nothing special about that level of support either. It isn’t law and it can be changed at any time by the people running the debate. Political parties are private organizations and the debates are just media events.

4

The polls are done by telephoning a random sample of Americans, and asking them all the same set of questions. Participants are asked which party they usually vote for, what party they claim, and their gender. If the sample contains a lot more men than women, for example, the number of calls with the bigger group is pared down.

Yes, they ask about the third-party candidates, and the responses show in the results.

You ask if a vote for Johnson or Stein is wasted, that depends on what you mean by wasted. Johnson and Stein votes will be counted, along with the major candidates, and the results will be published. In some states, a solid total for a losing 3rd party affects that party’s difficulty in getting on the ballot. Aside from that, a vote for a 3rd party is a vote subtracted from the votes available to the major candidates. Like Nader and Perot, if a 3rd party campaign really ends up getting, say, 15%, it could tilt the overall result.

There are still a lot of folks who blame Nader and Perot for their candidate’s loss.

That’s all I know about it, and maybe more than you wanted to read.

5

Really? I know it isn’t official, but I thought that for the presidential and vice-presidential debates, it turned over to the independent Commission on Presidential Debates.

6

The CPD also posted their Format for 2016 General Election Debates, which includes this:

7

That is still a private organization that makes their own rules. I think by “official”, we meant dictated by either federal law or the Constitution. Neither of those apply here. You just have a nonprofit group formed to set the rules for some debates. That isn’t very meaningful although it currently has some influence due to circumstance. The NRA, ACLU or even the PTA could do the same thing if they wanted to.

8

“Independent” is a matter of degree. The CPD commissioners are appointed by the RNC and DNC leadership, so the organization is not exactly neutral with regard to minor parties.

9

As a GQ answer here is what the CPD says about where it came from:

Now qualifying for federal matching funds is another discussion completely.

From the same document - no the CPD commissioners are NOT “appointed by the RNC and DNC leadership.”