Elon’s New Political Party Will Fail

By now, you’ve read about Elon Musk’s plans to form a third party and run candidates against Republicans and Democrats in the next presidential election in 2028 and perhaps even as soon as the mid-term elections in 2026. The name of the new party is the America Party.

Running a third-party campaign is far from easy.

Perhaps the first problem with Musk’s plan is that he was encouraged to do so by Mark Cuban and Anthony Scaramucci. Cuban is a rich tech entrepreneur and more recently an owner of the NBA Dallas Mavericks team. He built a popular following on the show, Shark Tank. He’s a perennial political gadfly who talks about running for office but never takes the plunge.

Scaramucci holds the record for the shortest tenure in the White House, about ten days as Trump’s communications director during Trump’s first term. He was fired for some vulgar and despicable comments about another Trump advisor. The bottom line is that neither Cuban nor Scaramucci is taken seriously by anyone with real political power. If Musk is listening to them, he could use a tutorial about how Washington really works.

Musk’s second problem is that he based this move on polls he conducted on X (formerly Twitter) that showed Americans want a new party by a 2-to-1 margin. Polls of that sort are entirely unreliable and say nothing about what everyday Americans really believe. The poll participants are what statisticians call self-selected. This means they’re already on X, probably approve of Elon Musk and are politically engaged in ways that are adverse to established politics. Those who fit that description say they support a third party out of persistent frustration with the system, but they usually come home to the two main parties in the end.

Built To Fail, But MAGA Beware

Beyond those initial blunders, Musk’s effort is almost certain to fail. Here’s why: Musk is fighting a long history of failed third parties. In American politics, third parties have always failed although they can affect outcomes between the main parties in the process.

The most successful third party in U.S. history was Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party in the 1912 election. Roosevelt was president from 1901 to 1909. He chose not to run for a second full term and supported his Vice President William Howard Taft in the 1908 election.

Taft won but Roosevelt was disappointed in his performance as president and challenged Taft for the Republican nomination in 1912. Taft narrowly won the nomination at the Republican convention. At that point, Roosevelt launched his third party.

The Democratic nominee that year was Woodrow Wilson. In the end, Taft and Roosevelt split the Republican vote with 27.4% for Roosevelt and 23.2% for Taft. Wilson got 41.8% and won the election with one of the smallest pluralities for a winning candidate in U.S. history.

The combined Taft-Roosevelt vote would have won with 50.6% of the vote. Roosevelt did win 6 states and 88 electoral votes outright. That was a strong performance for a third party. But all it achieved was to deliver the White House to Roosevelt’s political opposite in Wilson.

Another strong performance by a third party was the American Independent Party of George Wallace in 1968. Wallace was the Governor of Alabama and an outspoken segregationist, although to his credit he disavowed segregation later in his career. The American Independent Party ran in 1968 on a states’ rights platform, a classic cleavage in American politics. Wallace ran again in 1972 and was the victim of an attempted assassination. He survived but was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

In 1968, Wallace won 5 states with 46 electoral votes and took 13.5% of the popular vote. The other candidates that year were Republican Richard Nixon (43.4% of the vote) and Hubert Humphrey (42.7% of the vote). The Nixon-Humphrey race was one of the closest elections in U.S. history. Since Democrats were still strong in the South at that time, it’s plausible that Wallace cost Humphrey the election.

The most recent prominent third-party campaign was in 1992 when Ross Perot ran on the Independent Party line against George H. W. Bush (Republican) and Bill Clinton (Democrat). Perot was an early opponent of free trade agreements, not unlike Trump’s position today. Perot did not win any states or electoral votes, but he did take 18.9% of the popular vote, the strongest third-party showing since 1912.

I was an advisor to a potential third-party candidate in the 2012 election. My candidate chose not to run but I did gain a lot of insight into the mechanics and finances of third parties. Money and name recognition are crucial but will not be a factor for Musk because he has plenty of both. It seems likely that he will find a suitable candidate. (Musk can’t run himself because he was not born in America).

It can also take years to get on the ballot in each state or at least a critical mass of states that can add up to victory. Local election authorities of both major parties will fight you tooth and nail. That’s why it was smart for Musk to start now for 2028 because it can take several years to get on the ballot.

All that said, Americans don’t really go for third parties. No third party has ever won the White House unless you count Abraham Lincoln in 1860 who ran as a new party in a four-way race. It’s unlikely Musk’s party will attract any hardcore MAGA supporters from the right or hardcore progressives from the left. At the same time, moderates in the middle tend not to be overly attracted to third parties in general.

The typical result of a third-party race is to lose but somehow tip the election in an unintended way. This happens by splitting the vote with the party you’re more closely aligned with and allowing the true opposition to slip into office with a small plurality. That’s a scenario Republicans need to watch out for in 2028 if Musk even makes it that far.