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Third-party and independent candidates for the 2008 United States presidential election

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 17, 2026
Entity authorityQ7893193 ↗
Source-derived summary

This article contains lists of official third party or independent candidates associated with the 2008 United States presidential election.

Third party is a term commonly used in the United States to refer to political parties other than the two major parties, the Democratic Party and Republican Party. The term is used as innumerate shorthand for all such parties, or sometimes only the largest of them.

An independent candidate is one who runs for office with no formal party affiliation.

Candidates who received, or ran for, the presidential nomination of a political party other than that of the two major parties in the 2008 presidential election, as well those who ran as independents, are listed below.

Candidates who qualified for minimum 270 electoral votes

The following nominees appeared on enough state ballots to theoretically obtain the minimum 270 electoral votes needed to win the election.

Constitution Party

Ticket

Candidates

Green Party

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Candidates

Libertarian Party

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Candidates

Independent

For independent candidates that did not achieve ballot access in enough states to win 270 electoral votes, see Independents section.

Other candidates

The nominees of the following parties appeared on fewer state ballots than needed to qualify for the minimum 270 electoral votes required to win the electoral college. These candidates could only theoretically have been elected in the unlikely event of a successful write-in campaign, or in the event that no candidate received at least 270 electoral votes. In the latter scenario, the election of the President would be determined by the House of Representatives.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Third-party and independent candidates for the 2008 United States presidential election” as wikimedia list article. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2008—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Third-party, independent and candidates can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as wikimedia list article. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7893193. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2008.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Third-party and independent candidates for the 2008 United States presidential election”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Third-party and independent candidates for the 2008 United States presidential election primary sources, Third-party and independent candidates for the 2008 United States presidential election archive and Third-party research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Third-party and independent candidates for the 2008 United States presidential election”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Third-party and independent candidates for the 2008 United States presidential election” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.