The history of third parties in America

Two unpopular major party candidates is less of an opportunity than it seems

When I wrote about the failures of No Labels as a moderate political play, I wanted to focus on constructive suggestions for what moderate donors could do, and not get bogged down in why spoiler campaigns are dumb in the context of the American political system.

But I do think the broader question of third party campaigns is worth engaging with on its own terms, because the United States is kind of an outlier here.

First-past-the-post electoral institutions obviously discourage third party voting relative to highly proportional systems. But most FPTP countries that I’m familiar with have a decent amount of third party voting, and at times even see third party representation in their legislation. One reason the Tories in the UK are poised for such an extreme drubbing is that not only is Labour pretty popular, but the Tories are bleeding votes to a right-wing splinter party. A couple of elections ago, the UK was governed by a coalition government because various third parties did well enough to ensure that nobody had a majority. Canada right now has a Liberal minority government that has been relying on limited cooperation with a left-wing third party to pass legislation. France has an upcoming legislative election in which strategic party alliances and tactical voting are a huge deal, and their most recent second round presidential election was between two different “third parties,” with the traditional center-left and center-right both locked out.

There are institutional differences that help explain this kind of thing, but it’s also an area where I’d be inclined to push against over-indexing on structural explanations and under-indexing on contingencies and the quirks of history. I don’t think it’s that hard to imagine a world where Donald Trump ended up being a third party candidate — or one where Emmanuel Macron never bolted the Socialist Party to become a third party winner.

A major reason US third parties are so marginal right now, I think, is that we simply haven’t seen the right alignment between ambitious personalities, the relevant structural features, and an interest in building real institutions. Instead, third partyism seems to suggest itself in a highly personality-centric way — which is really the opposite of what a political party is for and goes against the grain of American institutions, where there’s nothing really stopping a charismatic and forceful politician from waltzing into an established party and winning primaries. To understand where opportunities for third party success might lie, it’s useful to look at history — because third parties really have had significant influence in the past.

When do third party candidates succeed?

One major fallacy of No Labels-ism is that it’s based on the intuitive-sounding idea that both major-party candidates being unpopular creates a strong opportunity for a third party.

There’s a real logic to that, but I think it’s defied by history.