Dem
47
GOP
53
Elon Musk is about to make the same mistake that everyone else who has started a third party has learned the hard way. While it is true that many Americans dislike both the Democrats and Republicans, starting a new party isn't the way to fix it. There are already plenty of third parties out there. There is something more fundamental that has to be fixed before a third party will get anywhere.
Third parties have some immediate problems when they start up. The biggest one isn't money. It is getting on the ballot in 50 states, each with their own arcane rules, and where at least one of the major parties will fight tooth and nail to keep a new third party off the ballot.
There's also another big problem, namely the first-past-the-post single district system, especially in the House. To get a House seat, the third party has to get more votes than both the Democrat and the Republican. Unless the candidate is exceptionally well known and popular, this virtually never happens. To win the presidency, the candidate has to get more electoral votes than the Democrat and also more than the Republican. The third-party presidential candidate who got the largest share of the popular vote in the past 100 years is Ross Perot. In 1992, he got 19% of the popular vote—and 0% of the electoral votes. That's the problem. George Wallace got 46 electoral votes in 1968 (and 14% of the popular vote), but he was a regional candidate with a very specific appeal in his region.
If Musk really wanted to change things, his initial focus should be to get Congress to change the law about first-past-the-post single member districts. The best approach would be to have all House members be elected statewide based on proportional representation. In other words, each party would produce a list of House candidates. Then if it won [X] percent of the vote, it would get [X] percent of the House seats from that state. If that number was, say, five, the top five candidates on its list would be seated. Many countries have a scheme more or less like this. In this way, a new party that got 10% of the vote nationwide might be able to get 40 seats in the House and become a real force. Of course, in states with only a handful of House seats, getting 10% of the vote wouldn't get the new party anything, but in larger states it could pick up a few seats here and there.
As to presidential campaigns, this wouldn't work. In 2024, No Labels raised $25 million and couldn't find anyone who wanted to waste his or her time running on its ticket. One approach to dealing with that problem and boosting small parties could be fusion voting. It used to be common, but now only New York and Connecticut have it for all offices. California, Maryland, and Pennsylvania have it for some offices. When fusion voting is allowed, multiple parties can nominate the same candidate and all the votes for the candidate on all the party lines are added up. For example, in New York in 2024, The Working Families Party nominated Kamala Harris for president and she got 3.4% of the vote statewide on this line, but all those votes were added to the 52.5% she got on the Democratic Party line. Similarly, Donald Trump got 3.9% of the vote on the Conservative Party line. In this way, a vote for a small party shows support for that party without endangering the voter's second choice candidate. If a party can get 10-15% of the vote, then its choice becomes a major factor in elections and it begins to get real power. But the long process of changing laws is not something Elon Musk has the patience for. So all his efforts and money will come to naught. (V)