The Size And Distribution Of U.S. Third Parties

 

From The Washington Post

A Vote For A Third Party Is A Vote For Donald Trump

The following post is by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich: 

I couldn’t sleep last night. I made the mistake of looking at a lot of voting data before bedtime and then reading some of the BS being put out by the third-party group “No Labels,” as well as by my old friend Cornel West, who’s now running for president as the Green Party candidate. It was a mistake. It’s now 2 am where I am, and I’m loaded for bear. 

Let me be absolutely clear. Third-party groups such as No Labels and the Green Party are in effect front groups for Trump in 2024, and should be treated as such.

 

No Labels has pledged to spend $70 million to support a third-party candidate in 2024 who could easily draw enough votes from President Biden to tip the presidential election to Trump.

No Labels has already qualified as a presidential party that can run candidates on the ballot in 10 states, including in both Arizona and Florida. Already, Joe Manchin is flirting with the idea of running as a third-party presidential candidate under the No Labels banner. 

If you believe that No Labels exists in order to encourage bipartisanship, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.

No Labels — which claims to be a centrist organization —  will not reveal its donors, one of whom is reportedly the conservative megadonor Harlan Crow. Politico reports that No Labels has brought on a major Trump donor as an adviser in the pivotal battleground state of Florida.

But whatever it says it aims to be, No Labels will help Trump.

 

So will every other third party claiming to be in the “center” or on the “left” — including the Green Party, which is already on the ballot in the two key swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin and whose most likely candidate for president is Cornel West. And the People’s Party, especially if Robert F. Kennedy Jr. becomes its nominee. 

The reason they’re all front groups for Donald Trump is that the upcoming 2024 election is likely to be nail-bitingly close even as a two-way race between Trump and Biden. 

The good news is that Trump loyalists don’t represent a majority of the electorate — which is why Trump has lost the popular vote in both his presidential runs and did not top 47 percent in either. 

So, as long as the anti-Trump vote is unified behind Biden, Trump cannot win, as Biden demonstrated in 2020. 

But if a third-party candidate takes even a small part of the anti-Trump vote away from Biden, Trump is likely to be returned to the White House. 

Consider the five states most likely to decide the 2024 election in the Electoral College — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In 2016, Trump narrowly won each of them, giving him the presidency. In 2020, these five states narrowly tipped in the other direction, giving Biden the presidency. 

Biden’s razor-thin margins in these five states in 2020 came from a massive anti-Trump vote. 

In all of these states, at least 1 in 3 Biden voters said they voted mainly against Trump. In Wisconsin (where the Green Party has already secured a spot on the 2024 ballot), 38 percent of Biden voters said they voted mainly against Trump. In Arizona (where No Labels has already secured a spot on the 2024 ballot), 45 percent of Biden voters said they voted mainly against Trump. 

Biden has no margin for error. Even a small drop-off from his 2020 anti-Trump vote would make him vulnerable. 

Just 44,000 votes out of more than 10 million cast in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin — less than half of 1 percent — were the difference between the Biden presidency and a tie in the Electoral College that would have thrown the election to the House of Representatives, and hence to Trump.

If candidates from No Labels, the Green Party, and the People’s Party peel off just 15 percent of the anti-Trump vote from Biden, and Trump’s base stays with him, Trump would win all five swing states comfortably and return to the Oval Office.

These third parties are already putting out rubbish about “voting your conscience” and “giving the people a real choice.” It’s cynical propaganda designed to obscure the reality that any anti-Trump votes they pull away from Biden will only help ensure a Trump victory. 

If No Labels were a legitimate third party rather than a Trump front, it would withdraw from all ballots for the 2024 election. If Cornel West and the Green Party had positive intentions, they would do the same. The rest of us must spread the word about the dangers of these third parties.

 

If Trump wins the GOP nomination for president, as seems highly likely despite (or because of) his coming trials, all Americans who believe in democracy must unite behind Joe Biden — to ensure that Trump, in the words of then-Rep. Liz Cheney, “never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office.”

Please spread the word. Now.

Would Voters Support A Third Party In The 2024 Election?

The charts above are from the Monmouth University Poll -- done between July 12th and 17th of a nationwide sample of 910 adults, with a 4.9 point margin of error. 

46% Say They Would Vote For A Third Party (But They Won't)

Former Democrat Andrew Yang and former Republican Christine Todd Whitman have formed another political party. They believe it is time for a third party. Of course, this ignores the fact that there are already several "third parties" -- the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, the American Independent Party, the Constitution Party, and several others.

They are calling their new party the Forward Party, and are hoping it will appeal to moderates. But so far, the party has no platform or stated beliefs (other than to give Americans more choices in elections). They hope to have events in a dozen cities this Fall to roll out a platform. The problem with that is that there's no issues that are considered thoroughly moderate. Each issue they claim will immediately be labeled as either on the left or the right, and moderates will quickly become disenchanted.

As the chart above shows, about 46% of the public say they would vote for a third party (Economist / YouGov Poll done between July 30th and August 2nd of a sample of 1,500 adults with a 3 point margin of error). But that has not been what has happened in our history. Third parties, even established ones like the Green and Libertarian parties, don't get enough votes to matter much.

I think this new party will get few votes, if it can even get candidates on the ballot by November. I think they are shooting for the 2024 election, but if they survive that long, they'll be unlikely to make much difference.

The problem they face is that very few voters are really independents. Most, if they are not members of one of the two major parties, at least lean strongly toward one of them. Voters will have two fears that will keep them from voting for the new Forward Party. First, they will be afraid of wasting their vote in a hopeless endeavor. Second, they will be afraid that voting for a third party will allow the major party they like the least to win -- whether it be the Democrats or Republicans.

The Forward Party is not a terrible idea. We could use another party near the middle now that the Republican Party has become extremist. But it's an idea that will fail. While they complain, Americans like their two-party system.

The Yang / Whitman Third Party Is Destined To Fail

 

The United States is basically a two party system -- currently the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Other parties have been established (like the current Green and Libertarian Parties), but have not been able to effectively compete with the two major parties. The last new party that succeeded was the Republican Party, which replaced the Whig Party which was already dying.

Andrew Yang and Christine Todd Whitman -- a former Democrat and former Republican -- think it's time for a new party, and they think they can succeed where countless others have failed. They call their new organization the Forward Party, and they hope to tap into the large group of moderates in this country. 

I think their party will be a spectacular failure. Jamelle Bouie does also. Here is part of what he wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times:

Let’s not mince words. The new Forward Party announced by the former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, former Gov. Christine Todd Whitman and former Representative David Jolly is doomed to failure. The odds that it will attract any more than a token amount of support from the public, not to mention political elites, are slim to none. It will wither on the vine as the latest in a long history of vanity political parties.

Why am I so confident that the Forward Party will amount to nothing? Because there is a recipe for third-party success in the United States, but neither Yang nor his allies have the right ingredients.

First, let’s talk about the program of the Forward Party. Writing for The Washington Post, Yang, Whitman and Jolly say that their party is a response to “divisiveness” and “extremism.”

“In a system torn apart by two increasingly divided extremes,” they write, “you must reintroduce choice and competition.”

The Forward Party, they say, will “reflect the moderate, common-sense majority.” If, they argue, most third parties in U.S. history failed to take off because they were “ideologically too narrow,” then theirs is primed to reach deep into the disgruntled masses, especially since, they say, “voters are calling for a new party now more than ever.”

It is not clear that we can make a conclusion about the public’s appetite for a specific third party on the basis of its general appetite for a third party. But that’s a minor issue. The bigger problem for Yang, Whitman and Jolly is their assessment of the history of American third parties. It’s wrong.

The most successful third parties in American history have been precisely those that galvanized a narrow slice of the public over a specific set of issues. They further polarized the electorate, changed the political landscape and forced the established parties to reckon with their influence.

Take the Free Soil Party.

During the presidential election of 1848, following the annexation of Texas, the Mexican-American War and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, a coalition of antislavery politicians from the Democratic, Liberty and Whig Parties formed the Free Soil Party to oppose the expansion of slavery into the new Western territories. At their national convention in Buffalo, the Free Soilers summed up their platform with the slogan “Free soil, free speech, free labor, free men!”

The Free Soil Party, notes the historian Frederick J. Blue in “The Free Soilers: Third Party Politics, 1848-1854,” “endorsed the Wilmot Proviso by declaring that Congress had no power to extend slavery and must in fact prohibit its extension, thus returning to the principle of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.” It is the duty of the federal government, declared its platform, “to relieve itself from all responsibility for the existence of slavery wherever that government possesses constitutional power to legislate on that subject and is thus responsible for its existence.”

This was controversial, to put it mildly. The entire “second” party system (the first being the roughly 30-year competition between the Federalists and the Jeffersonian Republicans) had been built to sidestep the conflict over the expansion of slavery. The Free Soil Party — which in an ironic twist nominated Martin Van Buren, the architect of that system, for president in the 1848 election — fought to put that conflict at the center of American politics.

It succeeded. In many respects, the emergence of the Free Soil Party marks the beginning of mass antislavery politics in the United States. They elected several members to Congress, helped fracture the Whig Party along sectional lines and pushed antislavery “Free” Democrats to abandon their party. The Free Soilers never elected a president, but in just a few short years they transformed American party politics. And when the Whig Party finally collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions, after General Winfield Scott’s defeat in the 1852 presidential election, the Free Soil Party would become, in 1854, the nucleus of the new Republican Party, which brought an even larger coalition of former Whigs and ex-Democrats together with Free Soil radicals under the umbrella of a sectional, antislavery party.

There are a few other examples of third-party success. The Populist Party failed to win high office after endorsing the Democratic nominee, William Jennings Bryan, for president in 1896, but went on to shape the next two decades of American political life. “In the wake of the defeat of the People’s party, a wave of reform soon swept the country,” the historian Charles Postel writes in “The Populist Vision”: “Populism provided an impetus for this modernizing process, with many of their demands co-opted and refashioned by progressive Democrats and Republicans.”. . .

This is all to say that there’s nothing about the Forward Party that, as announced, would have this kind of impact on American politics. It doesn’t speak to anything that matters other than a vague sense that the system should have more choices and that there’s a center out there that rejects the extremes. . . .

The biggest problem with the Forward Party, however, is that its leaders — like so many failed reformers — seem to think that you can take the conflict out of politics. “On every issue facing this nation,” they write, “we can find a reasonable approach most Americans agree on.”

No, we can’t. When an issue becomes live — when it becomes salient, as political scientists put it — people disagree. The question is how to handle and structure that disagreement within the political system. Will it fuel the process of government or will it paralyze it? Something tells me that neither Yang nor his allies have the answer.

Desire For Another Political Party Is High

 

The charts above are from the Gallup Poll. The most recent survey was done between January 21st and February 2nd of a national sample of 906 adults, with a 4 point margin of error.

The top chart shows that the desire for a third political party is higher than it's been since Gallup has been asking this question (October 2003). It currently stands at 62% (with 33% saying it's not needed).

The most support comes from Independents (70%) and Republicans (63%). Only 46% of Democrats agree.

NOTE -- This poll should be viewed as not serious. There are already more political parties on the left (Green Party) and the right (Libertarian Party and Constitution Party). It's easy to say another political party should be created, but it is doubtful that many people would actually join such a party. 

What these people really want, in my opinion, is a party that agrees with them on everything. And that, regardless of your beliefs, is a near impossibility. The poll represents dissatisfaction with the current parties, but creation of new parties is unlikely to fix that.

Is Trump's Third Party Threat Real Or A Tool To Keep Power?

 Donald Trump has threatened to start his own political party -- the Patriot Party.

Is this threat real? Would he actually follow through on it? 

A recent Morning Consult Poll showed that if he did, about 30% of current Republican Party members would follow him into the new party. 

That has Republican leaders scared. They know that a third party headed by Trump, while unlikely to succeed, would be devastating for them in the 2022 and 2024 elections. Trump also knows this.

I doubt Trump would actually try to start a new party. It would be too much work (and he hates work). But just the threat of it is accomplishing his real goals -- to prevent being convicted in the impeachment trial, and to remain in control of the Republican Party for the next 2-4 years. He likes being thought of as a kingmaker.

Normally, presidents that lose after one term are not considered to be the party's leader. Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush both lost the presidency after their first term, and neither could be considered their party's leader after their loss. The same can be said of Jimmy Carter for the Democrats (even though he has rehabilitated his image in recent years).

Trump wants to change that. He cannot stand being thought of as a loser (even though he is). He wants to remain the most powerful Republican. Sadly, it looks like current leaders in the Republican Party are going to let him do that.

Why? Because they are political cowards. It would be best for their party in the long run to get rid of Trump (who has done so much damage to their party), but they don't have the courage to do it. They are more interested in their own political survival.

They know Trump better than anyone. They know he is crazy and vindictive. They know he sees the world as friends (people loyal to him who obey him) and enemies (all others), and they don't want to be on his enemies list. They are afraid they will have a well-funded primary opponent, and maybe even have to run against a third party candidate if they survive that.

In the political life of an elected official, there comes a time when they have to choose doing what's better for the country (or their party) and doing what's best for themselves. Sadly, too many choose the latter -- and that is what most in today's Republican Party are doing. They have chosen political cowardice over political courage. It's shameless and hypocritical, but then those seem to be values in the current GOP.

Trump knows they are cowards, and that's why he's threatening to start a new party or make sure they have primary opponents. He knows their cowardice will cause them to bend their knee to him -- and that is all he wants.

Most 2016 Third Party Voters Prefer Biden In This Election

 

The charts above are from the Morning Consult Poll. They have questioned over 7,000 likely voters who voted for a third party in the 2016 presidential election. Those voters, combined with some Democrats who stayed home that year, resulted in Donald Trump being able to squeak out an electoral college win. But most of them are not going to repeat that mistake in the 2020 election.

About 53% of them now support the election of Joe Biden (and will vote for him). Only 21% now support Trump, and the remaining 26% are either still voting for a third party (14%) or are unsure (12%).

Most third party voters understand that this election is not an ideological one, but is a referendum on Donald Trump. They are not Democrats, but they know that Trump has been a disaster and must be removed from the White House.

New Poll Gives Hillary Clinton A 10 Point Lead Over Trump

These results are from the new Fairleigh Dickinson University Poll -- done between September 28th and October 2nd of a random national sample of 862 registered voters, with a 4.4 point margin of error. It has Hillary Clinton with a 10 point lead over Donald Trump when third party voters are figured in.

The question, of course, is whether this poll is an outlier -- since it gives Clinton a larger lead than most other recent polls (most of whom give her about a 5 or 6 point lead over Trump). It could be. But it should be noted that Nate Silver, the respected poll analyst, gives the Fairleigh Dickinson Poll an A+ rating for being accurate and unbiased.

It will be interesting to see if the vice presidential debate will have any effect on the polls in the next few days. I suspect it won't have much effect. It was only watched by about half the number that watched the first presidential debate, and I think most of those viewers already had their minds made up, and just tuned in to root for their favorite.

But I could be wrong. We shall see.

Presidential Poll Averages In Eleven Important Swing States

The chart above shows the average of all the latest polls done in the swing states (from RealClearPolitics). These averages are usually closer to the actual voter percentages than most single polls.

Most Voters Have No Opinion Of The 3rd Party Candidates

There are four candidates on enough state ballots to give them a theoretical chance of winning the presidential race (by garnering 270 electoral votes). Besides Democrat Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, there are Jill Stein of the Green Party and Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party.

But Stein and Johnson both have a serious disadvantage. A strong majority of Americans don't know then well enough to have an opinion of them. And that is true regardless of political leanings or ideology. That's bad for them, because voters simply will not vote for a candidate they don't know and trust.

This cart was made from a recent Gallup Poll -- done between July 13th and 17th of a random national sample of 1,023 adults, with a margin of error of 4 points.

Do Americans Really Want A Third Major Political Party ?

This chart reflects the results of a new Rasmussen Poll -- done between June 4th and 7th of a random national sample of 952 likely voters, with a 3 point margin of error.

Note that the survey says 38% (nearly 4 out of 10) of Americans think the country needs a new political party. The problem is they didn't ask that 38% what kind of new party would it be -- a party of the right or a party of the left? I suspect the answers would be all over the political spectrum, which means that 38% would be unable to agree on supporting a new party.

If they all could agree on what the new party should be, it would be competitive -- because that party would be slightly larger than the current Democratic and Republican parties. But it's easy to say a new party is needed, and quite another to follow through on those words.

The fact is that there are already other political parties. The Green Party is to the left of the Democratic Party, and the Libertarian Party is to the right of the Republican Party -- and then you have ultra-right parties like the American Constitution Party. But most of that 38% won't vote for these "third" parties. The Greens and Libertarians get about 15% of the vote combined -- barely enough to keep them on the ballot from election to election, and other "third" parties do far worse (having to earn their way onto the ballot with each new election).

In other words, there are "third" party options available that span the political landscape -- and if that 38% was serious, they would vote for them. But they don't, and that makes me think they are just trying to show their disgust with Democrats and Republicans. They don't really want a third major political party.

New Political Party Created For Trump

This political year seems to get more interesting every day. It's starting to look like regardless of who the Republicans nominate to run against President Obama, there will be a bevy of fairly well-known candidates on the ballot in the presidential race. Last week we learned that former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson is dropping out of the Republican race, and will be seeking the nomination of the Libertarian Party. Now there is more evidence that Donald Trump is seriously considering a third-party run for the presidency.

After having to cancel his own self-moderated debate of Republican candidates because most of those candidates refused to appear in it, Trump told the media he was still considering a run for the presidency as an Independent if the GOP didn't nominate the right person. He even went so far as to change his party affiliation from Republican to Independent. At the time, I thought it was just an example of "sour grapes", since Trump had been embarrassed by his failed attempt at moderating a debate.

But it's beginning to look like he may have been serious. Some Trump supporters in Texas have filed the necessary paperwork to create a new political party -- a party that would run Donald Trump as its presidential candidate. They have named their new party the "Make America Great Again Party". That name's not gonna fly, because Texas has a rather strange law that says a political party name must be no longer than two words, but the point is that the first concrete action has taken place to get Trump on the ballot. Maybe he's really serious about running. When asked about the new political party Trump said:

"I am aware and flattered by this filing by my supporters in Texas. I have not authorized anyone to act on my behalf and am not a candidate for president at this time. I will not, however, rule out a third-party candidacy if the Republicans nominate a candidate who cannot defeat Obama and I recently changed my party registration in New York state to preserve my legal option to appear on the ballot in all 50 states if I do decide to run."


While it's true that Trump has not announced his candidacy, I find it hard to believe the party was created without his knowledge and consent. He still might decide against running, but I'm now starting to believe he really is considering running for the office.

The new party doesn't guarantee Trump will be on the Texas ballot. Any party that didn't make a certain threshold of votes in the last statewide election must gather a few thousand signatures (of voters who didn't vote in either party's primary) to get ballot access. The Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, and Greens have already qualified for ballot access, but Trump's new party would have to wage a signature drive after the Texas primary in early April. I imagine he could easily get those signatures. Texas has an abundance of birthers and teabaggers.

Now all Trump has to do is get "supporters" to take his new party to 49 other states.

(Since the Republicans and Democrats have animal mascots to represent their parties -- the elephant and the donkey -- I thought Trump's new party needed its own mascot. What could be more perfect for a Wall Streeter like Trump than a pig?)

Most Third-Party Candidates In 76 Years

Third parties seldom do well in United States elections, and many political pundits usually just consider their candidates to be spoilers for one of the candidates of the two major parties.   For example, Greens can siphon off progressive votes from Democrats and Libertarians can siphon off conservative votes from Republicans.  

But recent polls show that Americans may be ready for a new political party to compete with the Republicans and Democrats.   Significant portions of the electorate have answered in the affirmative when asked this year if they would like to see a new major third party.   It seems that many voters are unhappy with both the Democratic and Republican parties.

And some existing third parties are trying to take advantage of that feeling this year.   In just races for the United States House of Representatives there are 443 third-party candidates.   That's the most third-party candidates running for the House in 76 years (since 1934 when 513 third-party candidates ran).

The Libertarian Party has fielded the most candidates.   They have 153 House candidates.   The Green Party is second with 58 House candidates, and the Constitution Party comes in third with 39 House candidates.   Several other smaller parties are running candidates, including a revived Whig Party (see above bumper sticker).

Since 1932, there have been 17,403 House races, and third parties have run candidates in 9,782 of them (for an average of 0.56 candidates per House race).   Here in Texas we have had 422 candidates out of 1,000 races.   That's pretty good considering how hard it is for a third party to get on the ballot in Texas.

It's hard for third-party candidates to get elected in America, but they keep plugging away.   I'm glad, considering the reluctance of both major political parties to make real changes that would take power from the corporations and rich and return it to ordinary Americans.   I hope both the Libertarians and the Greens do well enough to stay on the ballot in the next election.   I myself voted for some Greens and some Libertarians this year.

Frankly, keeping third parties on the ballot is a way to pressure the Democrats and Republicans to actually keep some of their promises.