Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein is on track to earn more votes than Ralph Nader did in 2000 — posting the party’s best-ever showing in a national election and building toward a future away from the two-party system, her running mate Ajamu Baraka said in an appearance Thursday at an Uptown church.

With less than two weeks left until the election, Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton remain historically unpopular candidates, with only 52 percent of voters viewing Clinton unfavorably and 59 with an unfavorable view of Trump. That distaste is leaving as many as 15 percent of voters to say they are undecided or considering other options, such as Stein, Libertarian Gary Johnson, and in some states independent conservative Evan McMullin.

October is typically when support for third-party candidates falls as voters decide to choose “the lesser of two evils,” Baraka said, but support for Stein is holding fairly steady at a level that would exceed the 2.8 million votes Ralph Nader drew in 2000, the party’s high-water mark. And even if the polls are overstating the number of votes she draws Nov. 8, Baraka said that would still represent millions of people, enough to build the party moving forward.

“If we have a core of a half a million or a million, we can make transformational change in this country,” Baraka said, noting that the party already has 300,000 members. “We will be a significant force moving forward.”

Though he called Trump a “danger,” he said that Democrats successfully focus liberals’ attention on defeating the Republican in election after election, and keeping the left marginalized within the party. Meanwhile, Trump is just thus far just a demagogue, while Clinton’s policies as Senator and Secretary of State have had negative and even fatal consequences around the world, Baraka said.

“People have been very troubled by what they have seen coming out of the debates, in particular the warmongering and dangerous positions being articulated by Hillary Clinton,” Baraka said.

Baraka urged the dozens of people in the audience to use his appearance to join the Green Party of New Orleans, and begin working to elect local Green Party candidates no matter the outcome of the election.

“This Green Party process is not something that just emerges every four years,” Baraka said. “This is something that doesn’t end on Nov. 9. I’m not concerned with you all just voting for us on Nov. 8. I want to strengthen an authentic alternative here.”

To read our live coverage of Baraka’s remarks, see below:

Live Blog Ajamu Baraka speaks at First Unitarian Universalist Church – Oct. 27, 2016