On the first round of voting at the Libertarian Party’s nominating convention on Sunday morning, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson narrowly missed the threshold of support needed to secure the party’s nomination, requiring another round of voting.
Johnson was the party’s nominee in 2012 and has been viewed as the likely standard-bearer this time around, despite backlash from the party’s more radical Libertarian wing.
In the first round of voting, Johnson reached 49.5 percent of the vote, according to the official party total, just shy of the majority needed for victory. His nearest opponents, Austin Petersen and John McAfee, reached 21 and 14 percent respectively.
Johnson spoke with reporters between the first and second rounds of balloting. Johnson said “it’s not the end of the world” if he doesn’t win the party nod. He added that he was not proactively trying to reach out to delegates, saying that’s just not his style.
Johnson received almost 1 percent of the general election vote in 2012, but said that in a year of unpopular offerings from the Democratic and Republican parties, he stands a chance of breaking through.
A recent national poll had Johnson receiving 10 percent of support from registered voters, drawing his strongest support from respondents under 35. Another national poll showed 44 percent of registered voters would want a third party to run against Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, and Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee.
The Libertarian Party is the only third party with ballot access in 50 states. This means its nominee will be the only alternative to Trump and Clinton available to all voters in this election.
Just before the nomination vote, Johnson said if he were to win the nomination, he would head to New York on Monday for media opportunities.
Johnson, who served as New Mexico governor as a Republican from 1995-2003, said too few people knew what a Libertarian is, and that his job is to change that.