Is there anyone here who doesn't know that Third party presidential candidates collapse in the polls during the last 30 days of the campaign?
They don't have the organization to get out the vote, they can't organize early voting, they don't have the money for ads, and the people who say they are going to vote for them in polls are responding to name recognition, but the major party candidates are in the news so much, they have higher name recognition by the end of the campaign.
Speaking of name recognition, my feeling is that Barack Hussein Obama won in 2008, partially because some low information voters confused him with Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Ladin, and were lodging a protest vote.