By Yascha Mounk
Monday, October 05, 2026
The smart money in American politics has always bet
against the rise of third parties.
The reasons are both obvious and numerous. The two-party
system has been firmly entrenched for 200 years. America’s electoral system
makes it very difficult for candidates who are neither Democrats nor
Republicans to gain traction because voters are rightly worried about “wasting”
their votes. And while many people are deeply unsatisfied with the current
offerings, they don’t necessarily agree on the alternative they would prefer:
Just because Jane and Jill might both like the idea of a third party doesn’t mean
they will ever agree on the same candidate.
That helps explain why third-party candidates usually
fail, often helping to elect candidates who are ideologically very different
from those third parties in the process. Ralph Nader’s third-party run likely
helped put George W. Bush in the White House in 2000. Jill Stein may have
rendered the same service to Donald Trump in 2016. Even Ross Perot, the most
successful third-party candidate of the past decades, ultimately helped Bill
Clinton win the White House in 1992.
The supposedly smart money is often based on conventional
wisdom. But the problem with the conventional wisdom is that it is usually
right for a long stretch—before suddenly proving to be disastrously wrong.
Take, as an example, the longstanding conviction among political scientists studying the
American primary system that party insiders ultimately decide who gets the
presidential nomination, a supposed certainty that blinded large parts of the field to Trump’s rise in 2016.
When it comes to third parties, we may now be approaching
a similar paradigm shift. Both in the United States and around the world,
structural conditions once favored a duopoly of incumbent parties. But these
structural conditions have since eroded to such an extent that the old
certitudes no longer apply. A successful third-party bid is much more likely
now than it was in the past.
***
Throughout the history of France’s Fifth Republic, two political parties
dominated the country’s politics: the socialist left and the moderate right.
These two movements drew the vast majority of votes, occupied the lion’s share
of seats in the National Assembly, and won every single presidential election.
Support for these two parties had been eroding steadily
for years. In 2002, for example, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the far-right candidate,
surprisingly edged out Lionel Jospin, the candidate of the center-left, in the
first round of the presidential election (though Jacques Chirac defeated Le Pen
in a landslide in the second round). In 2017, lightning struck: Emmanuel Macron
founded an upstart centrist movement and rose to power on a wave of discontent
with the established parties. His star has faded since then—but the traditional
parties have failed to recover: Opinion polls suggest that neither the leader
of the traditional left nor the leader of the traditional right has any
realistic chance of making the runoff of next year’s presidential elections.
Germany is undergoing a similar political metamorphosis.
For much of the country’s postwar history, Social Democrats and Christian
Democrats split the lion’s share of the vote. Between them, they usually took
70, 80, and at times even 90 percent of the vote. But support for these
so-called people’s parties has cratered in recent decades. At the last federal
elections, Social Democrats and Christian Democrats received markedly less than
50 percent of the vote, a record low. They have fallen even further in recent
polls, to about 33 percent.
What is true in France and Germany also holds in scores
of other democracies
around the world, from Austria to Australia. In all of
them, two parties once dominated politics. In all of them, these
long-established parties have shrunk or altogether disappeared. The number of
countries with effective duopolies is vastly smaller now than it once was.
In each of these countries, a similar set of causes has
driven the gradual demise of the political duopoly: Voters are unhappy with the
direction of their country, making it harder for traditional parties to retain
their loyalty. The public sphere is increasingly fragmented, making it harder
for a couple of catch-all parties to speak to most voters. Social media favors
charisma and authenticity, making it much easier for new political entrants to
storm the stage.
All of these factors are just as strong in the United
States—which helps to explain why popular support for both Democrats and
Republicans is rapidly eroding. The easiest way to see how much worse the two
main American political parties have become at satisfying their voters is to
look at partisan self-identification over time.
As recently as 20 years ago, the number of Americans who
identified with either Democrats or Republicans was about double the number who
thought of themselves as independent. Under these circumstances, third-party
candidates would have needed to win over a large share of voters with strong
partisan identities to be competitive—an all but impossible task.
Since then, the number of self-identified Democrats and
Republicans has shrunk significantly. There are now nearly as many independents
as there are Democrats and Republicans put together, creating more favorable
conditions for third-party candidates: If a third party candidate can win over
a lot of independents, they can, in principle, be competitive with the support
of a small fraction of traditional Democrats or Republicans.
Third parties are most likely to gain momentum when
voters are deeply unsatisfied with the traditional options on offer. And as it
happens, discontent with both traditional options is at or near record levels
today. Trump is less popular now than he has been at any prior point in his
first or second term: Polling averages show that around 60 percent of Americans
disapprove of his performance in office, with only about 37 percent thinking he
is doing a good job. Trump’s unpopularity has also dragged down support for the
Republican Party as a whole. In a recent NBC poll, only 36 percent of respondents
reported viewing the Republican Party
positively, with 49 percent viewing it negatively.
In a well-entrenched two-party system, one party falling
from grace to such an extent would usually boost the popularity of the other
party. For much of the second half of the 20th century, approval
ratings for Democrats and Republicans usually moved in opposite directions.
Strikingly, that no longer seems to be the case. Even as independents soured on
the Republican Party over the past 18 months, they have not become any more
enamored with the Democrats. According to that same NBC poll, only 29 percent of respondents saw the
Democratic Party positively, with 50 percent viewing it negatively. Net
favorability for Democrats is even worse than it is for Republicans.
For now, elections remain a choice between two unpopular
options. Though Democrats have a worse image than Republicans, the minds of
most voters are unsurprisingly focused on the failings of the man in the White
House. This year’s midterms are likely to produce a sizable, perhaps even a
huge, blue wave. But Democrats would be fooling themselves if they took this to
mean that most Americans have a positive view of the party or will necessarily
stay loyal to it over the long run.
So long as Trump remains toxically unpopular and
there are no realistic alternatives, voters will reluctantly flock to the
Democrats. There is absolutely no guarantee that these two conditions will
remain true forever.
***
Both Republicans and Democrats are very unpopular. So why
has a third party so far failed to materialize? Why does virtually every
representative and senator remain affiliated with one of these two parties? The
answers have to do with the nature of the American electoral system.
In countries with proportional representation, such as
Germany, voters can pick a small political party without feeling that they are
wasting their vote. Even if a new environmentalist or pro-business party gets
only 7 or 8 percent of the vote, it will still send some representatives to
parliament and may even enter government as part of a broader coalition.
However, in countries with a majoritarian electoral
system, such as the United States, a vote for a smaller party is usually
“wasted.” If you vote for the Greens or the Libertarians this November, you
almost certainly won’t affect the composition of the House or the Senate since
those parties are very unlikely to win a plurality of the vote in any district.
Even voters who might prefer the ideological profile of a local third-party
candidate are therefore likely to “hold their nose” and instead support the major
party candidate they dislike the least. (In addition, electoral rules are set
by the incumbent parties, and those are unsurprisingly keen to make it harder
for third parties to get off the ground; in many states, there are consequently
major obstacles to even getting on the ballot.)
This helps explain why countries with a majoritarian
electoral system have traditionally tended toward especially entrenched party
duopolies. In the United Kingdom, for example, Labour and the Conservatives
have for the past century split the lion’s share of the vote between them. Even
if you liked other parties better, you opted for one of the two main parties.
But despite the structural obstacles to the emergence of
third parties in the United Kingdom, that has started to change in recent
years. While Labour and the Conservatives often took more than 90 percent of
the vote between them in the postwar era, their cumulative vote share fell to
57 percent at the last general election and was as low as 37 percent in polling
averages earlier this year—a development that looks strikingly similar to those
in Germany and France. (Labour has somewhat recovered since Andy Burnham
replaced Keir Starmer as prime minister, but it is too early to tell whether he
can convert his honeymoon phase into lasting support.)
These changes are not yet reflected in the composition of
the House of Commons. In a majoritarian system with five or six viable
political parties, it is often enough to gain 30 percent of the national vote
to sweep to a large majority. But by the same token, a new party can gain a
majority at astonishing speed if it is able to rise to similar levels of
popularity. If the far-right Reform UK party, led by Nigel Farage, recovers
from recent funding scandals and gains 30 percent of the vote at the next election,
it could well win an outright majority of MPs.
Majoritarian electoral systems, like the one used in the
United States, create serious structural obstacles to the rise of third
parties. But when voters get sufficiently disillusioned with the traditional
duopoly that this system creates, these obstacles aren’t insurmountable, as the
case of the United Kingdom shows. Could America be next?
***
America, unlike the United Kingdom, has a president who
is directly elected. This means that voters pay comparatively less attention to
parties and legislative elections, and comparatively more attention to
personalities and presidential elections. It is therefore unlikely that the
rise of new political parties would take the same form as in Britain or most
other parts of Europe. I don’t anticipate that longstanding third parties like
the Greens or the Libertarians will succeed in upending American politics by
winning a succession of congressional races.
Instead, the most likely scenario for a third-party
breakthrough would resemble some of the close misses of the past: A charismatic
and (probably) rich individual would run for president without the backing of
either the Democratic or the Republican Party, possibly succeeding in electing
a number of senators or representatives on the candidate’s coattails.
To beat the odds, this kind of candidate would need to
start with high name recognition and have tremendous financial resources at
their disposal—in short, a celebrity who is famous for something other than
politics. Billionaires are the obvious possibility, since they can finance
their own campaigns. But a sports or movie or music star with a base of fervent
supporters and a strong network of high-net-worth friends is also an option.
These conditions constrain what a successful third-party
bid would look like. But they are hardly insurmountable. In a country as large,
rich, and raucous as the United States, there is no paucity of charismatic
celebrities with outsized ambitions and access to money.
In this respect, Trump proved to be the model. But while
he staged a kind of hostile takeover of an existing political party, his
spiritual successors may choose to assail the traditional parties from the
outside. In part because Trump for now retains a sufficiently large fan club to
block the way to any competitor on the populist right, future third-party
candidates may choose to challenge the MAGA movement from outside the structure
of the Republican Party.
Many readers will think that the fading hold of the
duopoly is a good thing. Since most Americans now feel disaffected with both
Democrats and Republicans, many of them understandably hope for a third party.
I should in theory feel the same way: While I don’t have any difficulty
choosing between the existing options, I don’t feel especially well represented
by either. Surely, I should be giddy with excitement at the prospect of having
more choices!
But that anticipation may prove to be premature. The
views of independents are highly heterogeneous, and many of the people who now
long for the day when they have a third option may find themselves deeply
disappointed when the day comes. While I personally would love to have a
political option that has moderate views on cultural issues and recognizes the
danger posed by authoritarian regimes like Russia’s, I fear that it is much
more likely that a successful third-party candidate would combine extreme cultural
views with deeply isolationist tendencies.
And then, of course, there are the perils of celebrity
politics. Given the nature of America’s political system, a third party is
likely to be led by a charismatic leader with little prior experience in
politics. Even if I should find the program on which they run to be congenial,
it is far from clear whether the candidate would, should they succeed in
entering the White House, enact a principled political alternative to the
status quo or simply use the office as a vehicle for self-aggrandizement.
Sooner or later, the day of the third-party candidate is
likely to be upon us. But when it comes, many who now find that idea to be
exciting may be in for a rude awakening.
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