Polls reveal Libertarian is serious threat to Trump

Libertarian party nominee Gary Johnson is emerging as a potentially serious factor in the US presidential race.

Most polls have focused on Clinton vs Trump. 

But four polls that include Johnson have him polling between 5% and 12% in a Clinton vs Trump vs Johnson matchup.

With the race so close, any Republican party protest votes that go to the Libertarian could be decisive.

Logic says Johnson should pull more votes from Trump, though currently he is also pulling support from the centre and also apparently eating into Clinton's support (the Democrat has a slim lead in both Clinton vs Trump and Clinton vs Trump vs Johnson scenarios — and the latter seems the logical one to poll now that Johnson has just officially entered the race).

Johnson also ran as the Libertarian party nominee in 2012, getting just under 1% of the vote despite having no profile and little media coverage:

2012 presidential race
Barack Obama, Democrat: 65,915,796 votes (51.06%)
Mitt Romney, Republican: 60,933,500 votes (47.20%)
Gary Johnson, Libertarian: 1,275,971 votes (0.99%)
(A half dozen other candidates shared the 0.74% balance of the vote)

With the most obvious third-party or independent candidate (Michael Bloomberg) having ruled himself out, disgruntled Republicans seem to have coalesced around Johnson by default.

1.3 million votes in 2012 might not seem like a lot in a country with 318 million people, but remember that at the 2000 election, only half a million votes separated George W Bush and Al Gore nationwide and, more pointedly (given the Electoral College system), Bush won the swing state of Florida by just 537 votes out of 6 million cast.

So who is he?
Johnson won two terms as governor of New Mexico (1995-2003), serving as a fiscally conservative Republican.

While in office, he sold a construction company he founded, Big J Enterprises. News reports don't give a figure but say it had 1000 staff; he seems to be in the multimillionaire rather than billionaire class.

Johnson won a limited Libertarian Party primary contest, which involved just four states and a convention, but garnered a smattering attention thanks to nutjob John McAfee's (unsuccessful run).

Earlier this week, Johnson was officially named the winner, with William Weld (the former Republican governor of Massachusetts) as the party's vice-presidential nominee. Weld has a fair amount of mana and a degree of national profile. At one point he was talked about as possible Republican candidate for the White House.

A flurry of publicity has followed over the past couple of days with the aforementioned polls, plus Mitt Romney saying he may vote Libertarian (albeit with the proviso that Weld at the top of the ticket).

It's easy to see the Libertarian Party as a home for some Republicans in the Never Trump movement. 

Its small government philosophy is close to that of the "Tea Party" wing of the Republican Party (whose presidential candidate, Marco Rubio, proved such a fumbler). And its legalise marijuana policy is perhaps not as controversial as it would be here, given so many US states now have de facto legalisation through medical provisions (or in the case of Colorado, all-out legalisation.

The US electorate has embraced a -third-party candidates at various points. In modern times, the most notable example is Ross Perot in 1992 who got 18.9% of the vote, allowing Bill Clinton (43.0%) to beat George Bush (37.4%).

Johnson doesn't have Perot's profile or perhaps charisma.

But with the Clinton-Trump race so tight, even a couple of percent of Republicans defecting to his party could turn the race.