FLATWOODS - While the "Never Trump" and "Never Hillary" movements pick up steam as the general election nears, there's another party waiting patiently, ready to take votes.
"Why not a Libertarian?" asked John Buckley, the state secretary for the Libertarian Party of West Virginia and a candidate for secretary of state.
Others had the same question. The day after Donald Trump all but secured the Republican nomination, searches for Libertarian on Google spiked, as did searches for former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, a candidate for Libertarian presidential nomination and arguably the national face of the party.
More than 100 Libertarians from West Virginia met for the party's state convention Saturday, choosing five members to go to the Libertarian National Convention in Orlando and listening to speeches from Johnson and Austin Peterson, another candidate for the Libertarian nomination.
The philosophy of the party can be summarized as fiscally conservative but socially liberal, a position that Johnson says puts the party in a prime position to pick up voters.
"To me, that is the description of a majority of Americans right now," Johnson said.
There's 3,241 Libertarians registered in West Virginia, according to the Secretary of State Natalie Tennant's website, a number that has increased recently, but is still well behind the 374,931 registered Republicans and 577,977 registered Democrats.
"It's not necessarily swaying people to become Libertarians," Buckley said about the party's current goals. "I think our baseline strategy is visibility."
Visibility has been a major issue for the party. Johnson, the presumptive candidate for the party said that participating in the national debates is one of his major goals.
"The only way for a third party to win is to be in the debates," Johnson said.
In order to get in the debates, Johnson has to have at least 15 percent support in major polls, something that is difficult because he isn't included in many of them.
"If I were being polled in these national polls, I guarantee you that in a very short time, I'd be at 15 percent or 20 percent nationally," Johnson said.
The Libertarians are on the general election ballot in all 50 states, something that couldn't be achieved if a candidate decided to run a third party bid today. Some Republicans who are against Trump are even suggesting that they will write in candidates like Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.
"Everybody is talking about a third party," Johnson said. "But they're not taking the next step and realizing that the Libertarian Party is the third party."
Party leaders in West Virginia hope that some of the resentment for the two major political parties in the presidential race trickles down to the state races as well.
"We're going to get more attention and more of the spotlight," Buckley said. "Half of our battle is to even get in the public eye."
West Virginians won't find the Libertarian on their primary ballot - the party makes its nominations at the state convention - but there will be Libertarian candidates for all major state positions on the general election ballot.
But since the party is so small, it struggles to pay for the same kind of campaigns that the Republicans and Democrats can.
"We are resource underdeveloped," Buckley said. "We're stretched beyond our means to print banners and print signs."
Buckley is nothing if not optimistic. He said that the only thing holding voters back is that they don't know about the party.
"If we had comparable resources with the major party candidates, I believe we would blow them out of the water," Buckley said.
Reach Dan Desrochers at dan.desrochers@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-4886 or follow @drdesrochers on Twitter.