3rd Parties Arguably Played U.S. Senate Spoiler Only Once In Michigan

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 10/27/2026) Seven of the last eight U.S. Senate polls have shown the race between Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and Mike Rogers to be within the margin of error. If this holds up, the four third-party candidates (Green Party, Libertarian, Natural Law and U.S. Taxpayers Party) may have an impact on who ultimately wins.

A third-party candidate arguably played the spoiler role only one time in the 37 regular U.S. Senate elections since 1916, according to a MIRS analysis of historical election results. That year was 2024, the last general election.

Now-U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly)'s 19,006-vote victory over Rogers in 2024 is the closest U.S. Senate race in Michigan history (percentage-point margin). Four minor-party candidates collectively received 170,817 votes, about 3.06% of the votes cast for the six candidates whose names appeared on the ballot.

Three minor-party candidates individually exceeded Slotkin’s winning margin: Libertarian Joseph Solis-Mullen, with 56,697 votes; Green Party nominee Douglas Marsh, with 53,978; and U.S. Taxpayers nominee Dave Stein, with 41,363.

Natural Law nominee Doug Dern received 18,779 votes, falling 227 short of the margin between Slotkin and Rogers. Of the four candidates, the candidate most politically aligned to Republicans is the U.S. Taxpayers candidate.

Had Rogers picked up half of Stein’s voters, with the remainder sitting out the Senate race and every other candidate’s total unchanged, Rogers would have won. Whether those voters actually would have behaved that way is impossible to know.

In three other Michigan U.S. Senate elections, the combined support of the third-party candidates exceeded the gap between the Republican and Democratic nominees, but it's not realistic to presume their absence from the ballot would have had an impact on the result.

In 2020, Democratic U.S. Sen. Gary Peters (D-Oakland County) defeated Republican John James (R-Shelby Township) by 92,335 votes. Three minor-party candidates collectively received 102,907 votes, exceeding Peters’ margin by 10,572.

Although it's mathematically possible James could have defeated Peters without third-party candidates on the ballots, he would have needed 95% of those votes. With 39,217 of those votes being far left-leaning Green Party votes, it's hard to imagine.

The 2000 election presented a similar situation.

Democrat Debbie Stabenow defeated Republican U.S. Sen. Spencer Abraham by 67,259 votes. Five minor-party candidates received a combined 111,040 votes, although no individual candidate exceeded Stabenow’s margin.

If every minor-party voter had instead selected one of the two major-party nominees, Abraham would have needed just over 80% of them to reverse the result.

The fourth election was in 1942, when Republican Homer Ferguson defeated Democratic U.S. Sen. Prentiss Brown by 28,057 votes.

Gerald L. K. Smith, running as an Independent Republican sticker candidate, received 32,173 votes. His total alone exceeded Ferguson’s margin, while minor candidates collectively received 38,699. However, Smith was a far-right populist and anti-Semitic activist who had previously run for the Republican nomination.

It's not likely his absence from the ballot would have helped Brown. The only other third-party candidate that year was Prohibition candidate LeRoy Lowell, who only received 6,526 votes.

In the remaining 33 contests, even transferring every minor-candidate vote to the runner-up would not have reversed the result.

The analysis identified 125 independent and third-party candidates in regular Senate elections from 1916 through 2024. Of those, 113 — 90.4% — received less than 1% of the vote.

The most successful bid was in 1936 when Louis B. Ward, an anti-New Deal candidate supported by the charismatic radio priest Father Charles Coughlin, received 4.43% of the vote, but the Republican lost so badly that year that Ward couldn't be called a spoiler.

In 1994, Libertarian Jon Coon received 128,393 votes, earning him 4.22% of the vote, but Abraham defeated Democrat Bob Carr by 277,810 votes, comfortably exceeding the 163,149 votes cast for all three minor-party candidates combined.

The MIRS analysis covers regular six-year Senate elections listed from 1916 through 2024. It excludes separate special elections and generally omits scattered write-in votes.