Few things in politics are ever entirely certain, but it can safely be said that Doug Bergum is not going to win the Republican nomination for president. Having declared his candidacy in June, the North Dakota governor has been waging an uphill battle against the margin of error ever since — sitting at an average of just 0.7 percent in the current primary polling and barely registering in most surveys of likely GOP primaries voters. Donald Trump’s lead over his best-known rivals has consistently remained in the high double digits. But if the likes of Chris Christie, former vice president Mike Pence (who officially dropped out of the race last week), and Nikki Haley are running absurdly quixotic campaigns with little to no chance of success, Bergum is truly in a class of his own.

Why is Bergum running? Futile presidential campaigns sometimes serve a purpose, even if it’s just a narrowly self-interested one. Vivek Ramaswamy, who has never held elected office and is easily the most successful of this year’s GOP primary no-hopers, clearly hopes to establish a national profile with a view to being selected as someone’s running mate or launching a better-placed candidacy in a few years. Christie seems to be auditioning for a postelection gig at somewhere like MSNBC.

These aren’t especially laudable reasons for running, but they are at least reasons. Occasionally, a margin-of-error candidate like Bergum will enter a presidential race out of sheer ideological eccentricity — hoping, perhaps, to finally vanquish the scourge of seat-belt laws once and for all or insist on America’s return to the gold standard.