BOULDERThe man running for president steps to the front of a college math classroom wearing a peace-sign T-shirt beneath a gold-buttoned blazer.

The T-shirt is untucked. Its neck is stretched. His jeans are yard-work fashionable.

If Gary Johnson's campaign seems low-key, its ambitions are not. After Johnson, the former New Mexico governor and current Libertarian Party candidate, failed in his bid to be included in the presidential debates, a mind-set took root.

He won't win. But he might impact who does.

"I get the thing all the time about a wasted vote," Johnson said Monday night in a packed lecture hall at the University of Colorado. "Wasting your vote is voting for somebody you don't believe in. That's wasting your vote."

"A vote for me," Johnson said later, talking to reporters, "really makes a statement."

It's a statement Johnson hopes the major party candidates will pay attention to, and he is confident he can disrupt the races enough in states like Colorado to have an impact on the winner and the national political discussion.

But analysts say Johnson is unlikely to do so for a litany of reasons: His poll numbers are too low; he draws his support too evenly from each major-party candidate; his $2.3 million raised is less than four-tenths of a percent of what President Barack Obama has amassed; and, perhaps most important, he doesn't have one big issue that voters associate him with.

"You need some critical mass," Denver independent political analyst Eric Sondermann said of successful third-party candidates. "For a third-party candidate to gain any traction, they need to be regarded as more than just a fringe candidate. They need to speak to a particular cause or movement."

But, in a presidential campaign so saturated in messaging from the major-party candidates, Johnson's voice is drowned out. Two Denver Post polls showed him drawing less than 3 percent of the vote and doing nothing to change the margins between Obama and GOP candidate Mitt Romney.

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Libertarian Gary Johnson's impact on Colorado likely negligible