Why Is There No Third Party in the United States?
Introduction
Contemporary American democracy is characterized by a distinctive bipolarity between its two political factions, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. In the popular imagination, the two parties, the Reds and the Blues, are separated by clear ideological demarcation lines: Democrats are liberal, socialist-leaning, pro-centralization; Republicans, on the other hand, are conservative, both socially and fiscally. Despite its population of 330 million people,1 the persistence of the United States’ political bipolarity suggests that, indeed, Americans fall neatly between these two categories; without popular support, this systematic division could not have persisted. This inference, however, could not be further from the current state of the American political scene.
A 2021 study of political typologies in the United States conducted by the Pew Research Center point to deep divisions in both partisan coalitions, as well as increasing bipolarity between the Republican and the Democratic parties.2 These divisions have been evident in the last presidential election cycle, as well, when supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol building, where the House of Representatives convenes. This act was deemed as a reflection of the American democracy’s decay, both by the Democratic Party, and by more center-leaning factions within the Republican Party, which illustrates the ideological diversity across and within party lines.3 Moving beyond the reductionist Red vs. Blue distinction, the Pew Research Center likewise categorizes the American people into nine ideological positions: Faith and Flag Conservatives, Committed Conservatives, Populist Right, Ambivalent Right, Stressed Sideliners, Outsider Left, Democratic Mainstays, Establishment Liberals, and Progressive Left.4 So, if Americans are this ideologically diverse, then why is there no prominent third party (or fourth, fifth, nth…) in the United States?
Background
When the United States was established in 1787,5 the Founding Fathers, key players who wrote the American Constitution, believed partisanship would negatively affect the democratic values the country was envisioned to uphold. John Adams, one of the Founding Fathers and the second President of the United States, wrote, “A Division of the Republick into two great Parties… is to be dreaded as the greatest political Evil.”6 Similarly, James Madison, another Founding Father and the fourth President of the United States, wrote that having a greater variety of parties and interests would “make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens.”7
Accordingly, in the early days of American democracy, it was easy to start a mainstream third political party.8 The Republican Party itself started as a third party in the 1850s, when a coalition opposing the expansion of slavery into Western territories formed amongst the Democrats and the Whigs, the two major political factions at the time.9 There were other parties that were born out of the debate on slavery in the 19th century as well: Liberty and Free Soil Parties were formed by anti-slavery advocates as the Democrats and the Whigs were becoming more pro-slavery.10 The Free Soil party even nominated a president, Martin van Buren, in 1848, indicating the prominent role a third party could take in a short amount of time.11 This is because all it took for prominent parties to emerge outside of the two major parties was people, ballots, and money (as candidates had to print and provide their own ballots to the voters). Almost as soon as they had enough supporters, third parties could contend for power.12 Since the middle of the 19th century, however, American politics witnessed the increasing force of partisanship and the virtual disappearance of smaller parties from the political sphere. Every U.S. president since 1852, in fact, has either been a Democrat or a Republican.13
The most common explanation for the emergence and persistence of bipolar politics in the United States comes from a 1954 paper by French sociologist Maurice Duverger.14 Duverger’s Law, as it came to be known in political science, holds that simple majority, single-ballot systems favor a two-party political regime.15 Such electoral mechanisms are called “first-past-the-post,” meaning that each voter has one vote, and the candidate with the most number of votes is the winner.16 The United States is an example of a country with the first-past-the-post system, which the Founding Fathers had imported from the 1430 British electoral mechanism.17 Contrary to a system of proportional representation, where parliamentary seats match the proportion of votes received, a first-past-the-post system sees only the candidate with the greatest number of votes become the winner. In this zero-sum set-up, even parties or candidates with the second-greatest number of votes, no matter how small their margin for losing is, do not win any representation. Therefore, Duverger’s Law maintains that in the long-run, rational voters, with only one vote to cast, will appreciate the risk of voting for a party which does not have a majority.18 This appreciation encourages what is called “strategic voting”; since losers do not gain any representation, voting for a preferred candidate who could not win a majority would be considered “wasting” a vote.19 As such, in a first-past-the-post system, voters gravitate towards one of two major parties which they predict have the highest chance of achieving a plurality and winning the election.20
The political parties, too, are incentivized to maintain a zero-sum approach in a first-past-the-post system.21 Since winner-takes-all elections offer no reward for winning less than a majority vote, both the Republicans and the Democrats, over time, abandoned districts where they had little support in favor of districts where they already had a sizable and relatively devout following.22 As such, instead of competing for each other’s votes, Republicans abandoned urban districts and Democrats abandoned rural districts, which created a reinforcing dynamic for the urban Democrat/rural Replication divide in contemporary United States.
Additionally, since the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, the Republican-Democrat polarization has come to encompass much more than voters’ zip codes.23 In what political scientist Liliana Mason terms “megaidentity,” other social identities, including race and religion, correlate to party affiliation.24 Therefore, deep-seated divisions exist within the American public, not only according to which political party they belong to, but also according to what race they identify as, what religion they ascribe to, whether they live in urban or rural areas, what their income bracket is, and what level of education they have received. This means that bipolarity in the United States is a socio-political conundrum, as well as a problem of governmental structure. Addressing this issue, therefore, depends both on being able to dismantle identity based animosity, and on enacting electoral reform that would enable a multitude of political parties to reflect the ideological diversity of the American public.
Discussion
There are, however, major procedural barriers that stand in the way of reforming the governance structure of the United States to allow for the emergence of a third prominent party, including potential candidates’ limited access to presidential ballots, the Electoral College, and the frequent use of the Senate filibuster.
Firstly, unlike the early decades of American politics, third parties can no longer nominate new candidates for president after they learn who the major parties have nominated. In 1848, the Free Soil Party had nominated its own presidential candidate, Martin van Buren, after the Whigs supported slave owner Zachary Taylor for president.25 In contemporary settings, however, there is not enough time between the end of the primary season and the general selection to gain “meaningful ballot access in enough states to win an Electoral College victory.”26 This is because in the late 1880s, uniform, state-printed ballots were introduced to combat the buying and selling of individual votes, which gave state legislatures that were dominated by the Republicans and the Democrats power to determine who was qualified to be on the ballot.27 This power was used by the two major parties to give themselves automatic lines on the ballot and institute petitioning requirements to hinder potential candidates.28
The case of Ewan McMullin illustrates the practical consequences of limited access to ballots. In 2016, McCullin, former CIA operative, ran for president against former President Donald Trump. Because he entered the race late, he was only able to get on the ballot in 11 states (which means that even if he had received every single vote cast in those 11 states, thus obtaining popular vote majority, he would not be able to become president due to the not being able to secure electoral votes).29 In order to be able to get on the ballot in enough states, a third-party candidate would need to do what McMullin could not, and do it in a short amount of time: hire expensive lawyers, and collect millions of petition signatures.30 This means that although getting on the ballot as a third-party candidate after the two major parties have announced their candidates is technically possible, practically, it is virtually unachievable. Such a candidate would need major funding and they would need to be well-known enough to be able to gather petition signatures. In modern America, the only people who can check both these boxes are billionaires. In this way, the ballot system is inherently discriminatory and encourages the persistence of the current two-parties-two-candidates set-up for presidential elections.
Secondly, the existence of the Electoral College means that winning the popular vote is not enough for a third-party candidate to win the presidential election, which encourages potential candidates to become nominees not as independent candidates, but as either belonging to the Democratic or the Republican Party. The Electoral College was established in the Constitution as a compromise between the election of the President by a vote in the Congress and the election of the President by a popular vote.31 As such, the President of the United States is elected not by the American public, but by a small group of people called “electors.” A couple of weeks after the popular vote, the electors cast their votes for president and vice president. Importantly, their votes do not have to reflect the popular vote of the state they represent (although they often do, because of a history of gerrymandering).32 There are 538 total electors, one for each U.S. Senator and representative, and three electors for the District of Columbia.33 Electors are chosen by state party conventions, which means that electors belong to the party that is a majority in their state.34 Combined with the fact that the Senate is composed of two senators from each state, despite how populous the state itself is, this also means that electors from smaller populous states, which produce a lower number of popular votes cast, have equal weight in deciding the president as large or populous states.35 For example, although Idaho, which is a Republican majority state, has a population of 1.9 million,36 and California, a Democratic state, has a population close to 40 million people,37 both states have two representatives on the Electoral College. Since electors vote along party lines, this system by default leaves no room for the success of a third-party candidate. Furthermore, because the Electoral College is part of the original design of the American Constitution, a constitutional amendment would be needed to change this system.38
However, the electoral gridlock caused by the Senate Filibuster makes it virtually impossible to pass any partisan bill through the Senate, let alone a constitutional amendment, and proposals to change the electoral system often do not garner bipartisan support. Filibuster simply means an attempt to delay or block a vote on a piece of legislation.39 Historically, this meant that, in order to block a vote from proceeding, a senator would give long speeches and refuse to yield the floor.40 This strategy worked because a debate had to have finished before the motion could move to a vote. Originally, a motion would have to be made to end the debate, which would pass by a simple majority (meaning, 51%). In 1806, however, Vice President Aaron Burr argued that the rule was redundant, and the Senate stopped using the motion.41 This inadvertently gave senators the right to unlimited debate, meaning they could indefinitely delay a bill without widespread support from ever getting to a vote. In 1917, the Senate passed “Rule XXII,” known as the cloture rule, which made it possible to break a filibuster with two-thirds of a majority.42 In 1975, the Senate reduced the requirement to 60 votes, which has effectively become the minimum number of votes needed to pass a law. As such, since the early 1970s, anytime a group of 41 or more senators (as the U.S. senate has 100 senators) simply threatens a filibuster, the Senate majority leader will not call a vote.43 In contemporary times, this tactic has been used in the Senate to block almost all partisan bills: of the 2000 filibusters since 1917, about half have been in the last 12 years.44 As such, in recent years, the Senate filibuster effectively set a 60-vote requirement for passing legislation in the Senate.
A recent act with the potential to transform the existing system was likewise caught in the Senate filibuster. As a response to former President Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election results and the Capitol riots in January, Democratic congressional leaders introduced the “For the People Act,” a “mega-bill” that contained dozens of proposals that government reformers had supported for years, on topics ranging from voting accessibility standards to restricting reform to small donor campaign financing.45 As it threatened the status quo, this bill was caught in the Senate filibuster.46 This illustrates that although it is technically possible to introduce electoral reform, which would support the emergence of a prominent third party in the United States, in practice, it cannot be achieved without bipartisan support. Considering that disturbing the status quo will disadvantage at least one of the current parties, a bipartisan support of voting reform is highly unlikely.
The urban-rural divide also exacerbates the problem of a Senate filibuster. Today, the 26 least populous (often rural) states are home to 17% of the U.S. population,47 yet they retain more representatives in the Senate as the 24 most populous states. Referred to as the “small state bias,”48 this means that the group of senators representing a small minority of the U.S. population can use the filibuster to prevent the passage of bills with broad public support. It is technically possible to eliminate the possibility of such frequent filibusters at the Senate altogether, however, that requires a supermajority too. In order words, it is highly likely that anything proposing to end the filibuster tradition will be blocked by the filibuster itself.
Therefore, there are major structural blockades that need to be resolved before amending the current electoral system of the United States. These include, but are not limited to, the practical difficulties around getting on the presidential ballot as a third-party candidate, the Electoral College, and the Senate filibuster. And yet, everything that is needed to change or dispose of the existing systematic obstacles, such as bills, acts, or constitutional amendments, are blocked by those obstacles themselves. As the Capitol riots made evident, the identity based animosity that is encouraged by the current system is unsustainable. Recognizing this, stakeholders and political actors from both parties have made certain strides in preserving the integrity of American democracy, by establishing or proposing to establish a new political party.
Recent Efforts to End Polarization
The most prominent recent example of a party official wanting to break away from the current system is Andrew Yang. Until 2020, Yang was a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who had never held elected office. In the 2020 Democratic primaries, however, he joined the race to become the Democratic Party’s nominee for the presidential election. He dropped out of the presidential primaries in February 2020, and ran for the Democratic mayoral primaries in New York City. However, he lost the nomination to Eric Adams by a small margin.49 In October 2021, he published a book titled Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy, and announced that he is starting the Forward Party with the hope that it would break the “duopoly” that dominates American politics.50 With a realism that considers pragmatic constraints, he proposes that the Forward Party undertake a simple reform: “There will be Forward-Democrats and progressives, Forward-Republicans and conservatives, Forward-Independents and unaligned, and so on.”51 In other words, understanding that disrupting party loyalty is no easy feat in modern American politics, Yang proposes that the vast majority of Forward’s supporters run as Democrats or Republicans. Instead of asking voters or candidates to disenfranchise themselves in certain parts of the country as a Forward member, he envisions that one can support Forward’s agenda while belonging to the Democratic or Republican parties. Yang’s proposal offers a simple solution to the quagmire of modern American politics: if you want to decrease bipolarity, don’t ask people to choose a side. In the long term, this innovative approach might encourage the bipartisanship that is needed to enact structural change. It could also involve in politics parts of the population that do not ascribe to Republican or Democrat values strongly, and, for this reason, choose not to vote. In fact, although U.S. politics is prominently talked about both domestically and globally, the U.S. trails behind most developed countries when it comes to voter turnout.52 For example, in the 2016 election, only 56% of the U.S. voting-age population cast a ballot.53 Considering that in the same year, between 35% and 45% of the population had identified themselves as independents,54 there is no surprise that moving beyond the Republican and Democrat distinction could increase political participation. Most importantly, in the case that a Forward-X candidate becomes the U.S. president, this political flexibility might lead to increased bipartisanship in the Congress and Senate, as well as more political cooperation across party lines on socio-economic issues.
A second scenario for establishing a prominent third-party in the United States rose from the ranks of the Republican Party. In May 2021, and as a response to the Capitol riots, one hundred former Republican officials signed a letter declaring that if the Republican Party does not break away from former President Donald Trump, they would back the creation of a third party.55 One of the organizers of the letter, Miles Taylor, former government official in the George W. Bush and Trump administrations, said, “The Republican Party is broken. It’s time for a resistance of the ‘rationals’ against the ‘radicals.’”56
The rhetoric of establishing a third-party due to in-party disagreements is reminiscent of the establishment of the Republican Party itself in 1854. As it would come out of an existing party infrastructure, and be founded by experienced former officials, it is possible that a more center-leaning off-shoot of the Republican Party might introduce relative diversity to the status-quo by becoming the first prominent third-party since the 19th century.
Conclusions
Be it through encouraging political plurality, or by supporting an offshoot of an existing party, officials from across the existing party lines are proposing ways to break the bipolarity of American politics. However, if nothing changes, it is becoming increasingly possible that the United States is indeed moving towards a nearly irreparable decay of governance. The global prominence of the United States, and its capacity of foreign influence, comes not only from its economic success, but also from the fact that for centuries, it has heralded itself as the beacon of freedom and liberty. The decline of American governance, as evidenced through the creation of megaidentities, structural blockades to political reforms, and the infamous Capitol Riots, points not only to domestic instability, but also to the potential of the United States losing its hegemony over global values, and in turn, its capacity to shape and influence international affairs.
Although the Founding Fathers considered bipartisanship to be the “greatest political evil,” contemporary American politics is plagued by an unwillingness to cooperate across party lines. In order to encourage collaboration, political flexibility, and compromise in the political arena, systematic reform that would dismantle the political structures that lead to bipolarity and identity based animosity are needed. There is widespread support for a third party within the two parties, as well as a record-high number of voters identifying as independents. However, without decisive action that seeks to eliminate the existing obstacles to systematic reform, it is possible that political partisanship will persist for the coming few election cycles. This is especially concerning, as the bipolarity and partisanship of modern American politics pertain not only to technicalities like electoral systems and voting mechanisms but also to individuals’ identities.
At the heart of this issue is the paradox of the American governmental structure itself: the status quo makes it virtually impossible to achieve reform without bipartisan support, and bipartisan support is virtually impossible to achieve in the status quo.
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The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author, and do not represent Fiker Institute.
