Who is Chase Oliver, Libertarian candidate garnering attention in the US elections?

Apart from US Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, voters on Election Day have also encountered Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver on the ballot.

A quick Google search for “US election results” reveals four candidates under the country’s map: Kamala Harris, Donald J Trump, Green Party candidate Jill Stein, and Libertarian Chase Oliver.

Oliver, 39, is described by his campaign as a “Libertarian activist living in Atlanta.” The openly gay candidate secured the party’s nomination in May after a close series of votes at the convention, where divisions among delegates nearly led to the result of no nominee.

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Who is Chase Oliver? And, how could he impact the Donald Trump vs Kamala Harris race in swing states?

1. Chase Oliver, a 39-year-old political activist and sales executive, is running for the US presidency as the Libertarian Party’s nominee for 2024. Known for his outspoken Libertarian views, he currently holds less than 1 per cent (over 500,000 votes) of the vote - a possibly influential considering the tight race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, especially in swing states.

2. Oliver appears on the ballot in 47 states and qualifies as a registered write-in candidate in three others.

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3. Oliver strongly opposes nearly all gun regulations, seeks to abolish the Department of Education and supports a constitutional amendment mandating balanced federal budgets.

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4. He also backs abortion rights at the state level, opposes Israel’s military actions in Gaza, and supports the legalisation of marijuana.

5. Before entering the 2024 presidential race, Oliver previously ran for Congress in Georgia’s 5th district in 2020. According to his campaign, he did not win the special election, losing to Democrat Kwanza Hall, who secured the seat previously held by the late civil rights leader John Lewis.

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6. In 2022, Oliver ran for a Senate seat in Georgia, receiving around 2 per cent of the vote, which led to a runoff between Democrat Senator Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker.

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7. At a meet-and-greet with Linn County Libertarians in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, attended by eight people, Oliver told The Gazette, a local newspaper, “A 39-year-old Libertarian who is ready to speak our principles boldly and loudly to the American public will look so great compared to two 80-year-old decrepit, old-party machine people, who are going to be spouting the same lines and the same mudslinging that they do every four years.”

8. Notably, third-party candidates have often been criticised by both Republicans and Democrats for diverting votes to candidates who are unlikely to win. In response, Oliver told Newsweek, “To those in one party or the other who see us as spoilers, I say, the two-party system itself is spoiled rotten. But we welcome being a disruptor to the political binary.”

9. “Unlike my two opponents, who focus on using the power of government to solve the problems - which ends up creating more problems - or using the power of government to push their viewpoints onto others, Libertarians are different. We seek to reduce the power of government and empower individual people to make their own choices in life, with regards to the education their kids receive and the medical choices they make,” he said. “We want to remove government’s impact on our lives as much as possible.”

10. The Libertarian Party is present on the ballot in most states, but Oliver currently polls in the low single digits, typical for third-party candidates. Whether his modest share of the vote will impact the Harris-Trump race remains to be seen, as does which candidate might be affected.

Although Chase Oliver is unlikely to directly influence the election results, his vote share could sway the overall outcome in the close contest between Harris and Trump. Democrats had intensified their focus on Oliver as part of a larger group of non-Harris candidates, whose votes they feared might ultimately benefit Trump. On Tuesday, a coalition of progressive groups launched a new seven-figure ad campaign across battleground states, targeting what they described as “third-party curious voters” and working-class communities, The Hill reported.