Will there be an American third party?

During the Charlie Kirk memorial, Trump shook hands with Elon Musk and the recent dispute seemed to have gone away. Musk got furious after leaving DOGE and Trump announced an out-of-control spending bill, the Big Beautiful Bill, which really was a slap in the face of Musk and everyone who has any intention at all to save money or find a way to balance the budget and pay off the debt. Voters don’t seem to care and few politicians in Washington are keen on fiscal savings plans. As a result of Musk’s anger, Musk announced that he was forming a new political party, The America Party, to provide an alternative to the two-party system dominated by the Republican and Democratic Parties. The America Party will be for centrist voters who make up “the 80% in the middle,” Musk wrote in a post on X.

While third parties have existed in American politics, they have rarely tipped the electoral scales. It is likely that Musk will face an uphill battle to change the American political landscape with his new party. The Democratic Party and the Republican Party have been the two dominant political parties in the U.S. since before the Civil War. With only a few short-lived exceptions, they have been the only significant parties for more than a century and a half. Even before them, when there were others, there were usually only two major parties.

Third parties did have more luck in the 19th and early 20th centuries, though. The Republican Party itself began as an alternative to the Democratic and Whig parties, both of which tried to avoid the issue of slavery. Other minor parties have had some success. But there has not been any sustained period of multipartyism in the U.S.

The biggest factor for the current system is probably the electoral system. With single-member districts for the legislature, there are strong incentives for both voters and politicians to gravitate to the top two parties. Since only one party can win, the two closest to winning are the only ones that matter. Even if a voter really likes a third party, they probably also have a preference between the top two. Voting for their favorite party has little impact, but voting for one of the top two may matter. Meanwhile, politicians who want to get elected know that they have a better chance of winning with one of those two parties.

There are many meaningful exceptions to this approach, for example, Canada, India and the United Kingdom. These are all parliamentary democracies, where winning a small number of seats in the legislature can still give you a ticket to a seat in the government. Parliamentary systems elect their government, including the prime minister, by building a majority in the parliament. If there are many parties, they can form coalitions. But in presidential systems like the U.S., there is pressure to unify in the election of the president, the ultimate single-member district. Still another factor is primary elections. In most democracies, parties control who their nominees are. So if you don’t like what the parties are doing, you have to form other parties. But with primaries, you can change the party itself by nominating new candidates. Indeed, the Democratic and Republican parties have changed a lot in their lifetimes. They have reversed on racial issues, and they have shifted and evolved on many others, including women’s rights, trade and foreign policy. If the parties are that flexible, there is little energy for creating an entirely new party.

None of these factors means that no third party could ever succeed. But major changes in the U.S. are usually within the parties, not from outside them. The last time a third party had a huge effect on politics was in 1912, when former Republican Theodore Roosevelt broke with his party and ran as a Progressive. And even then, the main effect of his candidacy was that the Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, won in an election he might not have. More recently, Ross Perot ran a third-party campaign for president in 1992, won almost 20% of the vote, and that, resulted in the win for Bill Clinton.

There are many voters who are frustrated with the current two-party system. Musk talks about a group of as many as 80% of voters who want this change, but he gets that number from a survey on Twitter/X, which is far from representative of the American public. The true scope of potential third-party voters is much smaller. Even if it were large enough to win an election, these disaffected voters are diverse. In other words, a lot of people want a third party, but they don’t want the same third party. So once the America Party starts to articulate what it stands for, that imagined 80% is going to shrink fast. In the end, there’s a constituency for Musk’s America Party, but they are mostly represented by Republicans, so he would need to win them over.

There is definitely a group of voters who are frustrated with the MAGA version of the Republican Party but who do not feel comfortable with the Democratic Party. Appealing to many of them should be easy. They are more fiscally conservative, and they care less about culture war issues and immigration. They would rather see spending cuts than funding for ICE. And many of them see Trump as a threat to American institutions, even if they benefit from many Republican policies. But until now, most voters in this category have been content to go along with Trump. Musk himself is unpopular, and while he may describe himself as moderate, he actively supported the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party in Germany and has been associated with other right-wing ideas.

Musk is wealthy, but resources only get you so far. Politics involves energizing people, not only getting them to vote, but inspiring them to volunteer and knock on doors for their candidate. You need ballot access in many different constituencies, and an organization to support candidates. One smart thing Musk seems to want to do is focus on a few legislative races. Winning the presidency is impossible, but there may be a handful of House and Senate races that he could capture, and so there are fewer places where he would need to build an organization. If the “America Party” draws more from Republicans than from Democrats, then a 50-50 district becomes a Democratic win. A current Republican stronghold might be a more likely target, but those districts may have fewer disaffected Republicans in the first place. Finding the sweet spot might be hard. A wiser strategy, already used by many who want to affect politics, is to get involved in primary elections. In a primary, Musk could bolster a Republican who would challenge Trump over those who are loyal to Trump. That’s less exciting than a third party, but it would be more effective.

Many political scientists think the Democrats are likely to win seats in the 2026 midterms. In an increasingly polarized environment, their gains might be modest, and the Senate will be much more difficult. Not every Senate seat is up every election, and the ones that are in 2026 give Democrats more seats to defend and fewer seats they have hopes of picking up. The most likely effect of an America Party surge in a close seat is a Democratic win. So even if Musk’s strategy works and he picks up a handful of seats, that still might not prevent Democrats from winning an outright majority in the House. The Senate is harder to predict, but again, a winnable seat for Republicans might be thrown to the Democrats.

What happens in 2028 will depend on what happens in 2026. If the America Party does win some seats, even if it doesn’t have the balance of power, that might give it momentum for 2028. The legislative strategy is still the smartest move. Bottom line is that Musk’s thinking seems self-serving and there is no holistic political platform, but more focus on areas where Musk might benefit. Voters will see this and eventually turn to the two established parties instead. At the expense of taxpayers, Musk would likely increase spending on the military industry and space industry, in particular his own SpaceX, and the development of his own business, decreasing social support and healthcare programs. At this point, the prediction is that the America Party will be dead already before the 2026 midterm election. Musk is not the right man to start an American third party, and it is frankly difficult to find anyone who fits the bill.