October 23 saw the Free and Equal Debate to which the top six presidential contenders were invited. Barack Obama and Mitt Romney ignored this invitation, but Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson, Green Party nominee Jill Stein, Independent Rocky Anderson and Constitution Party nominee Virgil Goode did participate.

After the debate, watchers were asked to vote for who they felt did the best job, who deserved to proceed to a two-person, head-to-head debate on November 5. Two rounds of “instant runoff voting” were held. The first round tallied up voters’ first choice to debate on November 5:

In a second round of votes, last-place finisher Virgil Goode was eliminated and those who voted for him had their second-choice votes for other candidates counted:

The shifting of Virgil Goode votes to other third-party candidates provides us a unique opportunity to judge the links between the ultra-conservative Virgil Goode and his 72.7% of the those supporting the government-for-Jesus-and-against-Mohammed, how-dare-they-put-God’s-name-only-on-the-edge-of-a-coin, utterly corrupt ex-Congressman shifted their votes to Gary Johnson. Just 16.5% of Virgil Goode supporters also supported Rocky Anderson. Only 10.8% of Virgil Goode supporters threw their support to Jill Stein, making the Green Party nominee the figure farthest from the controversial Goode.

After the second round of voting, Stein and Johnson remained the top two vote-getters, and so Gary Johnson will debate Jill Stein in the final debate of the presidential election season on November 5 at 9 pm Eastern Time.