The gulf between the Republican and Democratic parties would seem as deep as ever if all you did was listen to the sound bites. But there is also a feeling out there that regardless who gets elected president, it will be a shift in direction.

For one, for the first time in two decades, it is a near certainty that someone who doesn't have the name Bush or Clinton will become the commander in chief. But perhaps what's more significant is that one candidate is seen as a near outsider by many in his own party and the other candidate has risen to prominence on a single word platform: "Change."

That may be the way it feels, but history would say that there is little Americans resist more than a move away from the two party system. Here's a look at the five most successful runs for the presidency by third party candidates and how they did.

1. Teddy Roosevelt

If one of the sculpted greats on Mount Rushmore couldn't manage to win the presidency as a third-party candidate, who can?

In 1912, Roosevelt sought to return to office after a significant rift appeared in the Republican party during his four year absence from the Oval Office. His hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft, had led become too closely aligned to the conservative movement which favored big business and insisted on judicial supremacy. Roosevelt opposed the courts and tariffs, favored restrictions on women's employment and labor unions and ignored a long-held principle that presidents would serve only two terms.

Roosevelt was forced into the third-party run after the Republican Party refused to nominate him. He bolted and formed the Progressive Party, promising a square deal and a further weakening of big business monopolies.

And while he did manage to beat Taft in the popular and electoral vote in the general election with 27.5 percent of the vote, the split in the Republican Party essentially gift-wrapped the election for the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson, who received a mere 43 percent of the vote but collected the vast majority of electoral votes.

2. Millard Fillmore

Fillmore was the last Whig to hold office, and it was during his second effort to win the presidency after a four-year absence that the Republican Party came into prominence in the United States.

Running as the American (or "Know Nothing") Party candidate in the 1856 presidential election, Fillmore led a group of Americans who favored compromise over all else on the incredible division that had grown throughout the 1850s between the North and South on the issue of slavery.

Fillmore's run didn't come that close to victory - he only collected 21.6 percent of the vote - but it did affect the election. Fillmore was narrowly outpolled in the South, where Democrat James Buchanan defeated him 56 percent to 44 percent. But in the North, Fillmore collected only 13 percent. There, Republican John Fremont barely beat Buchanan 45 percent to 41 percent, giving Buchanan the election.

However, Fillmore had taken to focusing his party's attacks on Fremont, charging him with - gasp - Catholicism.

Needless to say, the division that only a few years later lead to the Civil War, was already firmly entrenched in the political realm.

3. H. Ross Perot

If the 1992 presidential election could have been held in the summer instead of November, Ross Perot might have had a chance.

Running on the newly formed Reform Party, the independently wealthy Perot surged in popularity in the first half of the election year by feeding off voters disillusionment with the two party system and a feeling of stagnation in Washington.

Perot, with his target painted firmly on the incumbent, George H.W. Bush, successfully gained in the polls by tapping into these feelings and attributing the government's shortcomings to the Bush administration. Some polls had Perot and Bush in a dead heat by midsummer.

However, his downfall ended up being a result of his early popularity. Polling so well, Perot was included in the presidential debates with Bush and Democratic candidate Bill Clinton.

It was there that Perot began to lose ground as his political inexperience was put on display and his combativeness with the president seemed exacerbated. As Perot and Bush duked it out, Clinton continued to gain in popularity. Perhaps the best illustration of this was the 1992 Pulitzer Prize winning photo of a televised debate between the three.

By the time the election rolled around, Perot managed only 19 percent of the vote and failed to win a single state. Bush did slightly better, but Clinton benefitted most from Perot's run, winning the presidency with a minority of the popular vote.

4. John C. Breckinridge

Calling a Breckinridge a third-party candidate is hardly an accurate description of his run for presidency in 1860.

The political fabric of the nation was so fractured in the election that brought Abraham Lincoln into power that there was really four candidates of note in the election.

Breckinridge, who represented the Southern Democrats - who had split from the Democratic Party after it refused to support a platform to maintain the legal right of southern states to uphold the practice of slavery - earned 18 percent of the vote. Stephen Douglas, the Northern Democrats' candidate, managed to collect 29.5 percent, and Constitutional Union candidate John Bell earned 12.6 percent.

Lincoln, even though he earned only 39.8 percent of the vote and wasn't even listed on several ballots in southern states, collected an insurmountable lead in electoral votes and cruised to victory.

5. Robert M. LaFollette

LaFollette, who had crippled Teddy Roosevelt's efforts to win the Republican nomination in 1912 by not throwing his support to the bespectacled one, later ran on the Progressive ticket that Roosevelt founded.

He barely made a dent.

LaFollette's candidacy - like most third party candidacies - was spurred a partisan rift, in his case the disaffection of liberal Democrats for their party's nominee, John William Davis.

Unlike many relatively successful third party runs, though, there was no political crisis or general ill will. The United States was enjoying one of its greatest booms in it's brief history, and incumbent Calivn Coolidge went on to win the election with ease, gaining 54 percent of the vote.

Davis earned about 29 percent of the vote, and LaFollette 16.6 percent.