Just yesterday, Arizona libertarian U.S. Senate candidate Marc Victor ended his campaign and urged his supporters to back Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters.

Victor was polling at 1% in a New York Times/Siena College poll released Monday.

Victor said he ran for the Senate “to promote and get us in the direction of freedom and peace and civility."

In his endorsement of Masters, Victor said that Masters is “doing everything he can to get us very sternly, very smartly in the direction of 'live and let live.' And that seems like a good tradeoff to me."

Masters participated in a video conference with Victor and hoped the competition-turned-endorsement will boost turnout on Election Day.

Democrat Mark Kelly leads Masters 51%-45% in the New York Times/Siena College poll, outside the 4.4 percentage point margin of error.

RealClearPolitics, which does an average of all the polls has designated the race as a toss-up.

Fox News Power Rankings and even the Cook Political Report put the Arizona Senate race as a toss-up, which suggests that the GOP's chances are improving in this crucial race, which could be crucial in determining which party takes control of the Senate following the midterms.

Previously, Kelly had an emphatic lead of more than 10 points over Masters, however, that majority seems to have melted.

Why have people changed their minds so drastically?

It's not the people, but rather the polling agencies.

As the late great Rush Limbaugh used to say, polls taken months before the elections are meant to influence voters, i.e., enthuse Democrats and dispirit Republicans. But as Election Day nears, the polling agencies begin to depict the real picture just to retain some credibility. They need to have some kind of record of being correct, or no one will pay attention to them next time.

Back to third-party candidates overall?

Currently, in the U.S. Senate race Erik Gerhardt in Pennsylvania, Jeremy Kauffman in New Hampshire, Chase Oliver in Georgia, and Neil Scott in Nevada are libertarian candidates running for the Senate in races that seem evenly poised between Republican and Democrat candidates.

Let’s look at the race in Georgia.

Georgia's law states that if no candidate gets more than 50% of the votes on Nov. 8, the Senate race will go to a runoff four weeks later — on Dec. 6 — between the top two vote-getters.

RealClearPolitics, which does an average of all the polls, has designed the race as a toss-up with Republican Herschel Walker leading by 1.6 points.

A new Atlanta Journal-Constitution survey, has Walker at 45.5 percent, Democrat Raphael Warnock at 45.2 percent, and Libertarian Chase Oliver at 4.8 percent. 

Oliver seems poised to cause a run-off. However he has no compunctions about this. He told Fox 5 Atlanta: “If I cause a runoff, I’m happy that happens because it will show that voters are frustrated with the two parties, and they want better options.”

Libertarians who stand for freedom and small government are known to poach on Republican votes.

Oliver even claimed that he can expound Republican principles better than Walker:

“I feel like [Walker] is unable to really articulate the principles of limited government, small government, lower taxes. If you can’t properly articulate that, and in particular in a debate to defend those ideas, then I don’t think voters are going to have faith in you.”

However, there is more to Oliver who seems unclear about libertarian principles.

He is pro-choice and said that if he was in the U.S. Senate, he would have drafted a bill “to protect the bodily autonomy of women and codify abortion into law.”

Chase is also in favor of ending cash bail claiming that:  

"Bail is forcing people who have not been convicted of a crime to pay for their pretrial freedom. The bail bond industry is built on the backs of the poor and mostly those arrested in the War on Drugs. Five hundred thousand people are in jail right now, not convicted of anything but being poor."

These ideas will turn off GOP voters and independent voters who are sick of crime, and his remarks are unlikely to earn him Democrat votes.

Libertarians support a fair criminal justice system, but they also know it’s necessary to protect individual safety and property rights. Ending cash bail clearly conflicts with these principles.

There are other third-party candidates in Senate races.

In Pennsylvania, where the race is very close, there is Libertarian Party candidate Erik Gerhardt.  In New Hampshire, once again, where the race is close, there is Libertarian Jeremy Kauffman. Finally, in the closely contested race in Nevada, there is Libertarian Neil Scott.

An anomaly to this is Utah which is the only state with no Democrat candidate running for Senate. Instead sitting Sen. Mike Lee (R) is running against Independent Evan McMullin who is also a former presidential candidate and a retired CIA officer. The Utah Democrat party has endorsed McMullin.

Beyond the Senate, there are gubernatorial races and House races that are also very competitive but have third-party candidates, such as the Libertarians, and the Greens.

There is former House Republican candidate from 2018, Shane Hazel who is the Libertarian Georgia gubernatorial candidate.

If all of these candidates drop out and endorse their GOP rivals, they will increase the chances of the Republican winning.

We must remember that these third-party candidates can be misused.

These are desperate times for Democrats, it is seemingly increasingly likely that they will lose both the House and the Senate. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

They have already exploited the attack on Paul Pelosi to baselessly claim it was either right-wing violence or inspired by the GOP’s rhetoric.

There are reports that Joe Biden may have also been attempting to meddle with the midterms.

The Democrats could support third-party candidates via the backdoor who can spoil the race.

The Democrats did meddle in the GOP primaries to facilitate the election of the most 'extreme' (read: MAGA) candidates whom they thought had a lower chance of winning the midterm. But the polls now indicate that these very candidates are likely to triumph during the main contest.

Despite the possibilities of backdoor deals between third-party candidates and the Democrats, third-party candidates still have the right to participate in elections.

The Democrats also have a challenge.

There is Betsy Johnson  a former Democratic state senator who is running as an independent gubernatorial candidate in Oregon.

Perhaps the GOP could have adopted a similar strategy and supported far-left third or perhaps fourth candidates to poach votes from Democrats.

This is a common strategy in multiparty Democracies, the bigger parties support extreme candidates via the backdoor to eliminate their rivals via proxy.

In a democracy, each and every citizen has a right to vote and also has the right to contest elections, irrespective of motive and as long as laws haven't been violated

The Republicans and Democrats will have to work harder and campaign more persuasively and make the ‘spoiler’ irrelevant.

Image: Screen shot from KGUN9 video, via YouTube