Rank the 3rd place 3rd parties

[sparkey]

Let's rank all of the 3rd place 3rd parties from best to worst. By that, I mean all of the 3rd parties that placed 3rd among candidates in a Presidential election, whether in the popular or electoral vote count. Here's a table I made about them, there were more than I expected:

Party name	Years active	Ideology	Best year	3rd place finishes
Anti-Masonic Party	1828-1838	Anti-Masonry, Protectionism	7.8% in 1832	Wirt in 1832
Nullifier Party	1828-1839	Nullification, Southern interests	11 EVs in 1832	Floyd in 1832 (EV)
Liberty Party	1840-1860	Abolitionism, Moralism	2.3% in 1844	Birney in 1840, Birney in 1844
American Party AKA: Native American Party, Know-Nothing Party	1845-1860	Nativism, Nationalism	21.6% in 1856	Fillmore in 1856
Free Soil Party	1848-1854	Anti-slavery expansion, Free trade	10.1% in 1848	Van Buren in 1848, Hale in 1852
Constitutional Union Party	1860-1865	Nationalism, Constitutionalism	12.6% in 1860	Bell in 1860 (EV)
Southern Democratic Party AKA: Constitutional Democratic Party	1860	Pro-slavery, Southern interests	18.1% in 1860	Breckinridge in 1860
Prohibition Party	1869-present	Prohibition, Social conservatism	2.2% in 1892	St. John in 1884, Fisk in 1888, Woolley in 1900
Straight-Out Democratic Party AKA: Bourbon Democratic Party	1872	Anti-reconstruction, Anti-compromise	0.4% in 1872	O'Conor in 1872
Greenback Party AKA: Greenback Labor Party, Independent Party	1874-1889	Greenbackism, Left-wing	3.3% in 1880	Cooper in 1876, Weaver in 1880
Socialist Labor Party	1876-present	Marxism, Syndicalism	0.3% in 1900	Hass in 1960, Hass in 1964
People's Party AKA: Populist Party	1891-1908	Populism, Agrarianism	8.5% in 1892	Weaver in 1892
National Democratic Party AKA: Gold Democratic Party	1896-1900	Classical liberalism, Anti-free silver	1.0% in 1896	Palmer in 1896
Socialist Party	1901-1972	Socialism, Left-wing	6.0% in 1912	Debs in 1904, Debs in 1908, Benson in 1916, Debs in 1920, Thomas in 1928, Thomas in 1932, Thomas in 1940, Thomas in 1944
Progressive Party (1924)	1924-1934	Progressivism, Populism	16.6% in 1924	La Follette in 1924
Union Party	1936	Populism, Longism	2.0% in 1936	Lemke in 1936
States' Rights Democratic Party AKA: Dixiecrat Party	1948	Segregation, Southern interests	2.4% in 1948	Thurmond in 1948
Progressive Party (1948)	1948-1955	Progressivism, Anti-war	2.4% in 1948	Hallinan in 1952
States' Rights Party	1956	Anti-tax, Non-interventionism	0.2% in 1956	Andrews in 1956
American Independent Party	1967-present	Paleoconservatism, Segregation (historical)	13.5% in 1968	Wallace in 1968, Schmitz in 1972
Libertarian Party	1971-present	Libertarianism, Classical liberalism	1.1% in 1980	Hospers in 1972 (EV), Bergland in 1984, Paul in 1988, Johnson in 2012
Green Party	1984-present	Environmentalism, Liberalism	2.7% in 2000	Nader in 2000
Reform Party	1995-present	Populism, Fiscal conservatism	8.4% in 1996	Perot in 1996

[sparkey]

My best shot at all of them (I don't expect everyone to rank all of them though):

1. Free Soil Party - Awesome party, combining antislavery sentiment with the more Democratic approach to economic policy, vs. the more Clayite approach that the Republicans would later take.
2. National Democratic Party - Anti-imperialist, classical liberal goldbugs? Count me in.
3. Libertarian Party - Needs to find more credible candidates and get a better Presidential result one of these years, but overall they're oriented similarly to me.
4. Liberty Party - Mega props for abolitionism, but I could do without the Puritan moralism. Also some minus points for running against the Free Soil Party later on.
---would have considered joining parties above this line---
5. Reform Party
6. Green Party
7. Progressive Party (1924) - No I'm not a Progressive, but 3rd parties get bad fast beyond this point.
8. Constitutional Union Party - Big minus points for trying to ignore slavery (as if that had worked before), but if you lived in the South, this was a great option on the eve of the Civil War. I also have a soft spot for them because I descend from some Southern Unionists who after the war used their support for this party as evidence of their Unionism.
9. States' Rights Party - Not sure about this party, but they don't seem to have been a segregationist party like the Dixiecrats. As far as I can tell, they were more of a tax protest party.
10. Straight-Out Democratic Party - Although sometimes called the Bourbon Democrats, they seem to have been more of an ex-copperhead group than a classical liberal group like the later Bourbon Democrats.
11. People's Party
12. Anti-Masonic Party
13. Greenback Party
14. Progressive Party (1948)
15. Socialist Party
16. American Party - I hate the Know-Nothings but it's worth mentioning that, like the Constitutional Union Party, I have some evidence that distant ancestors of mine supported them.
17. American Independent Party - Being a segregationist party will result in a low rank, but some small props for nominating a black guy in 2008 (even though it was Alan Keyes).
18. Nullifier Party
19. Prohibition Party
20. Union Party
21. States' Rights Democratic Party
22. Socialist Labor Party - NOT the party of Debs, this is a joke communist party that is lucky to have ever placed 3rd.
23. Southern Democratic Party - Yeah, so about making a party dedicated primarily to being pro-slavery...

[edit: moved the 1948 Progressives down a few notches, I had forgotten how bad they were outside of Wallace.]

[sparkey]

The rest of the parties either suck and/or are racist.

Is the second qualifier necessary? Was there a racist party that didn't suck?

[sparkey]

Liberty Party is winning if this is IRV right now.

[sparkey]

11. American Independent Party
12. Free Soil Party

I gotta ask what your reasoning is here.