Libertarian Candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party Candidate Jill Stein: How Did They Fare?

While President Obama delivered a resounding defeat to Mitt Romney in Tuesday's election, other presidential candidates are unhappy with their results as well.

Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson sought to offer an alternative for fiscal conservatives who felt the government had no business intruding in social issues.

He was on the ballot in every state except Oklahoma and Michigan, and voters could write him in in their ballots in Michigan.

The goal of any third-party candidate in the United States is 5 percent of the vote, which qualifies a party for federal funding in the next presidential election.

Johnson fell far short of that goal, receiving just under 1 percent of the vote, a total of a little over 1 million votes nationwide.

Green Party candidate Jill Stein fared even worse, receiving less than half a million votes nationwide, just over one-third of 1 percent.

She did not appear on the ballot in 13 states, though in 9 of those states, she could be written-in.

The Green Party reached its zenith of success in 2000, when presidential candidate Ralph Nader received about 3 percent of the vote, though some Democrats accused him of siphoning votes from Al Gore and allowing George W. Bush to win the election.

The last third-party candidate to break the 5 percent barrier was H. Ross Perot, who received about 20 percent of the vote on 1992 in a three-way race with then-president George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Third parties have often decried the onerous obstacles set in the path of smaller-party candidates. They must meet varying requirements and deadlines in each state in order to appear on ballots, and the two main parties ignore them as much as possible.

Stein was arrested outside the second presidential debate as she tried to gain access in a protest against the two-party system.

Neither of the main parties had allowed third-party candidates to participate in the presidential debates, a platform essentially required for national exposure.