Election 2020

Libertarian Candidate Marshall Burt Wins Wyoming State House Race

And in a three-way race for governor in Indiana, Libertarian Donald Rainwater gets more than 13 percent and wins more than 20 counties.

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The Libertarian Party (L.P.) had high hopes for a win in the Wyoming state House in two different races—and one of them came through. Marshall Burt has won in District 39 against Democrat Stan Blake, 1,696 to 1,420, according to Apollo Pazell, who was running the L.P.'s campaigns in the state.

This is only the fifth time the L.P. has won a state legislative seat with a candidate running only under the Libertarian label.

In Wyoming's House District 55, Bethany Baldes, who in 2018 lost a state House race against an incumbent GOP majority leader by only 53 votes, lost to Republican Ember Oakley by only 32 votes, 2,058 to 2,026.

In other L.P. races of note around America, Donald Rainwater, in a three-way race for governor of Indiana, has earned 13.1 percent of the vote with well over 90 percent of the results in. That is right in line with polling from last month, even though third-party results tend to fall precipitously from earlier polls when actual votes are cast. Rainwater came in ahead of Democrat Woody Myers in nearly two dozen counties around the state. Republican incumbent Eric Holcomb won reelection.

In Arkansas, with 81 percent of the vote counted, the L.P.'s Ricky Harrington got 33.3 percent in his race to dethrone Republican Sen. Tom Cotton. (No Democrat was on the ballot.) Harrington won outright in two counties. In Pulaski County, which contains the state capitol of Little Rock, Harrington leads Cotton 59 percent to 41 percent.

In Kentucky's Senate race, which Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell won with 58 percent of the vote, Libertarian Brad Barron got 4 percent while losing Democrat Amy McGrath earned 38 percent.

In Montana, L.P. gubernatorial candidate Lyman Bishop currently has around 3.5 percent with about 52 percent of the votes counted. That's more than 10,000 votes in a race where the declared winner—Republican Greg Gianforte—is presently ahead of Democrat Mike Cooney by about that many votes.

In Rhode Island, Libertarian William L. Hunt Jr. came within 150 votes of winning a state General Assembly race in District 68 against Democrat June Speakman.  (While the results at that link claimed to be complete at time of posting, since then that gap became over 1,400.)