Gary Johnson: Obama will win

Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson said Monday he thinks President Barack Obama will defeat Mitt Romney to win a second term.

“I think Obama’s going to win, that’s what I think,” Johnson told POLITICO in an interview. “[My vote is] really spread out, meaning I don’t think there’s any state that I’m going to do better than another.”

Johnson, who’s on the ballot in 48 states and the District of Columbia, hovers in single digits in the polls. The former two-term New Mexico governor declined to single out any state where he expected to do particularly well but said he had no regrets about how he ran his campaign.

“There’s nothing,” Johnson said. “I would ask that everybody look at it and maybe recognize that this is phenomenal that we spent $2 million and may get 5 percent of the general — now maybe it doesn’t turn out that way at all — but that we spent $2 million bucks and here we are playing in a game that by all accounts we should not be playing in, so no. Yeah, you make mistakes every single day, but the reality is: Holy cow.”

A CNN Ohio poll released Nov. 2 had Obama at 47 percent, Republican nominee Mitt Romney at 44 percent and Johnson at 5 percent. He has raised about $2.3 million, has about $35,000 on hand and is about $227,000 in debt, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Johnson gave his interview from the lobby of the Capital Hilton in downtown Washington accompanied by two aides, dressed casually. He will participate in the Free and Equal Elections Foundation debate with Green Party nominee Jill Stein on Monday night, then return to Albuquerque, N.M., to watch the election returns Tuesday.

It doesn’t make much of a difference which of the major-party candidates wins, Johnson said, rattling off a list of similarities he sees between Obama and Romney’s policies.

“Either one of them are elected, although they talk a big game: Continued unsustainable spending,” he said.

He lamented that media — especially on TV — tend to focus on the results of polls that don’t include third-party candidates.

“You go to the website,” he said. “CNN: ‘Obama 50, Romney 48, but when GaryJohnson’s name is included, he’s at 6.’ Well, come on. Where is that being reported?”

“The frustration is, if I were just given the credit that I’m due, which is a three-times mention or a five-times mention for every time Romney is mentioned 47 times, I think if you would go back three months and give me the credit that I would be due if this were a discrimination lawsuit, that I would be the next president of the United States because of the interest that would have generated,” he said later.

His “dream” is “to catch everybody with their pants down tomorrow,” he said. Yet he's pessimistic about whether it would be noticed, noting that even if he got 5 percent of the vote it would not get much attention.

“The most underreported significant showing of all time and space when it comes to a presidential election — I would love for that to transpire tomorrow. Get recognized for it. And maybe we even accomplish it and it goes unrecognized. That’s also another thing that could be very real. I get 5 percent of the vote but, ‘Oh, it’s just the pot smokers.’”

As for his plans after the election, Johnson indicated he’d return to his active, outdoors-oriented lifestyle.

“Get ready for the ski season,” he said, laughing, when asked what he would do after Election Day. Then his family and he “are going to all go climb Aconcagua in Argentina in December.”

As for a future run for office, Johnson was noncommittal.

“I hope to remain a spokesperson but I think the last thing anybody wants to hear right now is talk about 2016 when everybody’s just ready to barf over 2012, so I’ll stay away from that.”