Cravings for less Washington gave the Libertarian presidential entrant a record vote count while a tight Obama-Romney race hurt the Green Party, officials said.

The nearly 1.2 million votes won by Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson, a former two-term Republican New Mexico governor, supported public-opinion polls showing "consistently that a majority of Americans want less government than we have today," party Executive Director Carla Howell told United Press International.

Johnson, 59, who initially sought the presidential nomination of the Republican Party, won the Libertarian nod at the party's May national convention.

His nationwide vote count -- the highest count of the minor-party candidates -- represents about 1.2 percent of the total popular presidential vote in the 48 states in which Johnson ran, a UPI analysis of Tuesday's results indicated. Johnson was denied ballot positions in Michigan and Oklahoma.

His vote count also beat the previous Libertarian Party record, set in 1980 by lawyer-politician Ed Clark, of 921,128 votes, or 1 percent of the nationwide total.

Johnson had the strongest showing as a percentage of statewide presidential votes in Alaska, Maine, Montana, New Mexico and Wyoming, the UPI analysis showed. He had the weakest showing in Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York and Tennessee and Wisconsin.

Howell told UPI Wednesday the voter desire for radically less government was so powerful that Johnson might have won Tuesday if the media had covered his campaign more fully and if the Commission on Presidential Debates had let him debate Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

"If he had been in the debates, he possibly would have been the president-elect right now," she told UPI.

The commission, which sponsors and produces the debates, is currently directed by former Republican National Committee Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf Jr. and former Clinton administration press secretary Mike McCurry, a Democrat.

Critics say the commission excludes third-party and independent candidates.

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Libertarian Party buoyant; Greens hopeful