majority, debate participants must clear 15% in pre-debate opinion polls. This rule remained in place for 2004, when as many as 62 million people watched the debates, and has continued being in effect as of 2008. The 15% criterion, had it been in place, would have prevented Anderson and Perot from participating in the debates they appeared in. Major party marginalization A third-party candidate will sometimes strike a chord with a section of voters in a particular election, bringing an issue to national prominence and amount a significant proportion of the popular vote. Major parties often respond to this by adopting this issue in a subsequent election. After 1968, under President Nixon the Republican Party adopted a "Southern Strategy" to win the support of conservative Democrats opposed to the Civil Rights Movement and resulting legislation and to combat third parties with southern agendas. This can be seen as a response to the popularity of segregationist candidate George Wallace who gained 13.5% of the popular vote in the 1968 election for the American Independent Party. In 1996, both the Democrats and the Republicans agreed to deficit reduction on the back of Ross Perot's popularity in the 1992 election. This severely undermined Perot's campaign in the 1996 election. See also Equal-time rule Third-party and independent members of the United States House of Representatives United States Electoral College Independent politician Political party Political parties in the United States Proportional representation Third party (politics) Suffrage References Further reading Surveys Epstein, David A. (2012). Left, Right, Out: The History of Third Parties in America. Arts and Letters Imperium Publications. Gillespie, J. David. Challengers to Duopoly: Why Third Parties Matter in American Two-Party Politics (University of South Carolina Press, 2012) Green, Donald J. Third-Party Matters: Politics, Presidents, and Third Parties in American History (Praeger, 2010) Herrnson, Paul S. and John C. Green, eds. Multiparty Politics in America (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997) Hesseltine, William B. Third-Party Movements in the United States (1962), Brief survey Hicks, John D. "The Third Party Tradition in American Politics." Mississippi Valley Historical Review 20 (1933): 3–28. in JSTOR Kruschke, Earl R. Encyclopedia of Third Parties in the United States (ABC-CLIO, 1991) Ness, Immanuel and James Ciment, eds. Encyclopedia of Third Parties in America (4 vol. 2006) Richardson, Darcy G. Others: Third Party Politics from the Nation's Founding to the Rise and Fall of the Greenback-Labor Party. Vol. 1. iUniverse, 2004. Rosenstone, Steven