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Conventional wisdom holds that Libertarian Party candidates draw votes away from Republican candidates. However, some exit polling from Tuesdays midterms shows that wisdom may not be true.

Reasons Brian Doherty looked at the exit polling in North Carolina and Virginia and found that its not necessarily true.

It isnt common for Democrats to accuse Libertarians of spoiling elections for them, but a look at NBC News exit polls show that Haugh voters indeed came more from people who consider themselves moderate (5 percent of self-identified moderates went Haugh) and even liberal (4 percent of liberals voted for Haugh) than from conservatives (only 2 percent of whom voted for Haugh). Those were the only three choices for self-identification.

Only 1 percent each of self-identified Democrats or Republicans voted Haugh, while 9 percent of Independents did. (Those again were the only choices.) (Independents otherwise went 49-42 for Tillis over Hagan.)

In other exit poll results, Haughs portion of the vote fell pretty steadily as age groups got olderhe got 9 percent of the 18-24 vote, and only 2 percent of the 50-and-over crowd.

Haugh did strongest among white women in race/gender breakdowns, with 5 percent of that crowd, and only 1 percent of black men or black womanand no polled number of Latino men or women.

Other interesting Haugh exit poll results: His overall man/woman breakdown was the same, 4 percent of each in the exit poll. Haughs numbers got progressively smaller as voter income got biggerhe earned 6 percent of the under-$30K vote but only 1 percent of the over-$200K vote. Libertarians arent just for plutocrats.

As Doherty points out in an earlier piece, Sean Haugh, the Libertarian candidate in North Carolina, ran as a left-libertarian who was generally opposed to cutting social services. As for Robert Sarvis, the Libertarian candidate in Virginia, Doherty believes that Sarvis may have cost Ed Gillespie the Senate race. However, Sarvis e-mailed Doherty and says otherwise:

One cant assume the 3 percent Rs would be voting [Gillespie] in my absenceits quite likely these R voters would have joined the 7 percent of Rs voting for Warner. Polls throughout the race showed Warner enjoying double-digit support among Rs, and a fair number of Rs told us they cant stomach voting for [Gillespie]. A lot of business-type Republicans consider Warner acceptable, so probably many Rs who really disliked [Gillespie] voted for me because I was preferable to Warner, but would otherwise have voted Warner not Gillespie. So those R Sarvis voters were taken from Warner not Gillespie.

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By Norman Leahy and Paul Goldman November 7 at 6:00 PM

Does Mark Warner now owe his career to Virginias perennial Libertarian candidate,Robert Sarvis?

SarvissSenate campaign touted a 10 percent solution to our political woes. If 10 percent of the voters would vote for him, then the Libertarians would automatically get a line on the Virginia ballot, a la Republicans and Democrats and keep the major party candidates honest.

Sarvis got barely a quarter of that number. But his 2.5 percent solution did work wonders, just not for him. Exit polls provide powerful evidence he attracted enough Republican protest votes to swing the election for Democratic Sen. Mark Warner.

The Libertarians 53,000 voters mostly came from younger voters, particularly white males, unhappy with President Obamas leadership. They generally leaned independent. Very few (almost none, in fact) wereDemocrats. But a good chunk did label themselves Republicans.

Exit polls on fringe candidates are to be read with abundant caution. Yet it isclear the Sarvis Republican voter wanted to protest President Obamas leadership. If Gillespie had been the only option, they most likely would have backed the GOP nominee.But Sarvis gave them a second option.

The result? Instead of drowning in anti-Obama tidal wave runningfrom the wind turbines off the Virginia coast all the way to the Alaskan oil fields, Mark Warner found a life-preserver in the Libertarian candidate.

Third-party protest voting is a great American tradition. The most memorable in recent times wasGreen Party candidate Ralph Nader sinking environmentalist Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election and handing the election (after a Supreme Court ruling) to George W. Bush.

Thats politics. But 2014 is apparently the first time in Virginia that a protest candidate decided the outcome of a major election. Some vocal Democrats disagree, blaming racism for Warners near-loss. According to this theory, white voters antipathy toward President Obama is skin-deep. But since his name didnt appear on the ballot, they projected these prejudices on to Mr. Warner. Crying racismhas become a cottage industry among too many this cycle.

Warners supporters do him no favors by blaming white people for his election-night troubles. Twenty-five years ago, Doug Wilder made history by prevailing in a far closer statewide race with a far higher percentage of white voter support. He didnt blame racism for his narrow win. He praised voters for helping him make history.

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All Opinions Are Local: Warner owes Sarvis a big thanks