The 2016 presidential campaign of Gary Johnson, the 29th Governor of New Mexico, was announced on January 6, 2016, for the nomination of the Libertarian Party (or LP) for President of the United States. He officially won the nomination on May 29, 2016, at the Libertarian National Convention in Orlando, Florida, receiving 56% of the vote on the second ballot. Former Massachusetts Governor William Weld was endorsed by Johnson for the Libertarian vice-presidential nomination, which he also received on May 29, 2016.

Johnson and Weld formed the first ticket of any party to feature two governors since the 1948 presidential election. They received 3.3% of the vote, totaling nearly 4.5 million, dwarfing Johnson's 2012 popular vote total and marking the Libertarians' most successful presidential run to date and the most successful third-party candidacy since Ross Perot in 1996.

Background Johnson ran as the Libertarian presidential nominee in the 2012 election. In that race, he finished with the third highest popular vote total, nearly 1.3 million votes, and garnered nearly 1% of the popular vote. Johnson's vote total was the highest received by any LP candidatefor any officein the party's history. Shortly after the election, Johnson began to express interest in running for the Libertarian nomination again in the 2016 election.

Campaign

Johnson formally announced his candidacy for the 2016 Libertarian presidential nomination, in an interview with Neil Cavuto on the Fox Business Network program Coast to Coast, on January 6, 2016. He subsequently began participating in a series of debates with the other candidates seeking the Libertarian nomination, held at state LP conventions around the country leading up the Libertarian National Convention over Memorial Day weekend in Orlando, Florida. Johnson took a moderate position in a debate field of more hardline libertarian candidates, which led to an occasionally hostile reception from the audience when he spoke up in favor of certain government programs and regulations, including a moment that gained viral notoriety where he was booed for expressing support for testing and licensing drivers.

On March 3, 2016, Johnson addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., touting himself as the third-party option for anti-Trump Republicans, and saying that the Libertarian Party would be the only third party able to place its nominee on the ballot in all 50 states in 2016 due to ballot access hurdles.Benjy Sarlin, Anti-Trump forces have few options for third party alternative, MSNBC (March 4, 2016): "'I am the third party,' former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, the party's 2012 nominee, told conservative gathering CPAC on Thursday. 'The Libertarian Party will be on the ballot in all 50 states.'"

Johnson's campaign attracted increased attention as a possible vehicle for the Stop Trump movement's votes in the general election, once Donald Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee. Johnson has branded Trump's political views as authoritarian.

On March 15, 2016, Johnson won the North Carolina Libertarian primary with 42% of the vote, ahead of "No Preference" at 35%, with other candidates all polling below 6%. On March 1, 2016, Johnson won the Libertarian Party of Minnesota caucus with 76% of the vote.

On March 29, 2016, Johnson attended the first nationally televised pre-nomination convention Libertarian Party presidential debate, hosted by Fox Business Network, on John Stossel's show Stossel. The two-hour debate was divided into two one hour segments which were televised on April 1 and 8 at 9:00 Eastern Time. The debate featured Johnson, along with Austin Petersen and John McAfee.

Following Ted Cruz's withdrawal from the Republican primary elections and Trump becoming the Republican Party's presumptive nominee, it was widely reported that online searches for "Gary Johnson" and "Libertarian Party" spiked sharply on Google.

In early May, some commentators opined that Johnson was moderate enough to pull votes away from both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump who were considered controversial and polarizing by many voters. Johnson also began to get time on national television, being invited on ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, Bloomberg, and many other networks.

Nomination On May 18, Johnson announced that he had chosen former Republican Massachusetts Governor William Weld to be his running mate.

On the first ballot of the 2016 Libertarian National Convention on May 29, 2016, Johnson earned 49.5% of the vote. On the second ballot, he won the nomination with 55.8% of the vote.

Post-nomination

Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee and also a former Republican governor of Massachusetts, said he would consider supporting the Johnson–Weld ticket. Romney remarked that, "if Bill Weld were at the top of the ticket, it would be very easy" for him to do so. On June 22, Johnson and Weld participated in a nationally televised Town Hall hosted by CNN. On August 3, Johnson and Weld returned to CNN for a second nationally televised town hall. It was viewed by over 1.61 million people.

Beginning on August 12, a pro-Johnson political action committee, America Deserves Better PAC, began running television ads in Maine. On August 17, Johnson and Weld attended a Libertarian town hall hosted by Fusion. In August, Johnson's poll numbers began to approach the 15% threshold necessary to make him the first third-party candidate in recent history to participate in the broadcast, fall presidential debates. Johnson also began doing major rallies. On August 5, about 500 people turned out to a rally in Reno, Nevada. The following day he attended an event at the University of Utah.

On August 17, Johnson and Weld attended a town hall, attended by about 600 people, at the Wertheim Performing Arts Center in Miami, Florida. The following day, Johnson and Weld held a Las Vegas, Nevada, rally at The Foundry SLS Las Vegas. The campaign held events in Burlington Vermont, Concord, New Hampshire, Lewiston, Maine, where pro-Johnson super-PAC ads were being aired, and Boston, Massachusetts, home of Bill Weld. The campaign also added a brunch with Johnson and Weld in Portland, Maine. Over the weekend, hundreds of people attended each of the rallies.

In early September the Gary Johnson campaign began its first wave of paid TV ads. They were targeted at the Western states of Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Washington and the northeast state of New Hampshire. Purple PAC began airing pro-Johnson television ads in August. In early September, Americans Deserve Better super-PAC announced that support for Johnson has nearly doubled in Maine's 2nd congressional district.

In response to Johnson's growing poll numbers, the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic allies increased their criticism against Johnson in September 2016, warning that "a vote for a third party is a vote for Donald Trump" and deploying Senator Bernie Sanders (Clinton's former primary rival and now-supporter) to win over voters who might be considering voting for Johnson or for Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Democrats circulated "embarrassing videos of Johnson" and directed more resources toward winning "young voters and left-leaning independents" – a key Johnson demographic.

Comments on foreign policy

In September and October 2016, Johnson made a series of errors when facing questions about foreign policy.Maggie Haberman & Alexander Burns, Gary Johnson Equates Syria Deaths Caused by Assad and West, New York Times (October 5, 2016).David Weigel, Gary Johnson gives a foreign policy speech and chides the media for giving him pop quizzes, Washington Post (October 7, 2016): " Johnson tried to put a string of foreign policy gaffes behind him on Friday ..." On September 8, on MSNBC's Morning Joe, he was asked by panelist Mike Barnicle, "What would you do, if you were elected, about Aleppo?" (referring to the war-torn city of Aleppo in Syria). Johnson responded, "And what is Aleppo?" When an "incredulous" Barnicle said "You're kidding... Aleppo is in Syria – it's the epicenter of the refugee crisis," Johnson responded by saying that "the only way that we deal with Syria is to join hands with Russia to diplomatically bring that at an end." Johnson criticized U.S. support for the Free Syrian Army and Kurdish forces and stated that the "mess" in Syria was "the result of regime change that we end up supporting. And, inevitably, these regime changes have led to a less-safe world." Johnson's "what is Aleppo?" question drew widespread attention, much of it negative. Later that day, Johnson said that he had "blanked" and that he did "understand the dynamics of the Syrian conflict – I talk about them every day," but that he immediately thought that Barnicle's reference to "Aleppo" was in relation to "an acronym, not the Syrian conflict."

During a CNBC town hall television broadcast on September 28, Johnson was asked by moderator Chris Matthews, "Who's your favorite foreign leader?" Johnson at first stated "the former president of Mexico" but could not identify him by name. Johnson then stated: "I guess I'm having an Aleppo moment" and "I'm having a brain freeze." Johnson's failure to identify a foreign leader that he admired attracted media attentionincluding a New York Times article with the headline, "Gary Johnson Can't Name a Single Foreign Leader." Johnson later stood by his reluctance to "point out an elected leader, foreign leader that I admire," saying in a CNN interview, "I held a lot of people in this country on pedestals and then I get to meet them up front and personal and I find out that they're all about getting re-elected, that they're not about issues, a lot of empty suits that I held up on pedestals."

In speaking about the Syrian Civil War in an interview with The New York Times in October 2016, Johnson drew a moral equivalence between the Assad regime's intentional killing of hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians with the accidental killing of civilians by U.S.-backed forces. Johnson criticized Clinton, the former secretary of state, for what he characterized as her excessively interventionist leanings, and suggested that Clinton, as former secretary of state, was at least partially responsible for the crisis in Syria. Johnson also lamented the fact that the public placed pressure on U.S. leaders to "get tough on this stuff, on these atrocities."

In the same interview, when asked if he knew the name of North Korea's leader, Johnson responded "I do" but refused to name Kim Jong-un when pressed. The "misstep" prompted media attention and was described as "embarrassing to the campaign."Sammy Nickalls, Gary Johnson Doesn't Know the Name of North Korea's Leader: Johnson had yet another "Aleppo" moment, Esquire (October 5, 2016).Cameron Joseph, Gary Johnson refuses to name North Korea leader Kim Jong-Un in foreign policy interview, New York Daily News (October 6, 2016).Carla Herreria, Gary Johnson Couldn't Name North Korea's Leader, Kim Jong-Un: Yet another embarrassing Aleppo moment for the Libertarian presidential nominee, Huffington Post (October 6, 2016).Daniel Strauss, Gary Johnson won't name leader of North Korea, Politico (October 5, 2016).

Polling

Libertarian primaries

The Libertarian Party conducted presidential primaries in only a few states. All delegates to the Libertarian National Convention were unpledged, meaning that they could vote for the candidate of their choice. In pre-nomination preference polls conducted by state Libertarian Parties, Johnson won first place in most states preceding the Libertarian National Convention at the end of May.

Of the states which conducted a non-binding Libertarian presidential primary, Johnson won in North Carolina, Nebraska, and in the Minnesota caucuses. Due to early deadlines, he was not on the ballot in Missouri, where 'Uncommitted' received the most votes.