I know a few Sanders supporters who are flocking to Jill Stein or Gary Johnson. A few third party and independent candidates have become governors and been successful in the Senate. What would it take for a member of a third party to be elected as President? I do think it would be a great success for democracy if this happened.
It would take a very charismatic candidate to run third party and then have both of the Democratic and Republican party candidates do something disastrously scandalous. Even then the third party candidate has to win by an electoral majority or otherwise secure an overwhelming popular vote that even a congress controlled by Democrats and Republicans could not ignore. Other than that you just have to wait for a new party to grow large enough to compete.
funny thing they forgot this year …is when Bernie was first elected he was an independent I read this in an old newspaper story that I used for wrapping a bowl in …
Not sure “a few” people can truly be said to “flock” anywhere–especially if the flocking is in two different directions 
There have actually been very few true independents lately in Congress or as governors. The bulk are people like Sanders, Angus King, Arlen Specter–folks who are really associated with one party but for reasons of their own have chosen not to become an “official” member. I guess Jesse Ventura was a true independent…of course that didn’t end well.
Specter was, from the time he was first elected to the Senate in 1980 until his re-election campaign in 2009, a Republican. He only switched back to Democrat (he was a Dem until 1965) when he realized that the Republican party had moved so far right that he had no chance to get the PA Senate nomination as a Republican.
He HAD always been a moderate. He was actually one of the last moderate Republicans to fall. (Not that his conduct during the Anita Hill hearings was particularly progressive, but then neither were many supposedly liberal Senators’…)
Clinton and Trump throttling each other to death during the Presidential debates.
Trump is about as bad a main-stream candidate as you can get, and he’s still polling in the 40s. The only real answer to the question is “a change to the Constitution as to how elections are handled,” because we have a built-in preference for a two-party system. Wholly unintended by the founders, of course, but it’s there.
Aside from changing how we elect people, I think it would take the death of the favored candidate with a poor VP pick. Likely have to be a moderate with cross-party appeal. I’m thinking a guy like Colin Powell, pre-UN speech.
The only way I see this happening requires people starting on the local level working to organize and elect candidates to local and state offices as independents or a subgroup of an existing party. Then break away from the party at some point and go to the national level electing candidates to Congress. If the circumstances are right I suppose it could happen fairly quickly but even with severe social upheaval I would still expect it to take 8-10 years at the least.
Starting a third party from the top down doesn’t really make a lot of sense.
What would have to happen is for a third party to actually exist as a vehicle for electing people to offices. Right now all third parties in America aren’t helpful in getting elected, they’re hobbies for eccentric people.
So suppose you were that hypothetical charismatic independent, and you wanted to become president. How would you go about doing that? Running on a third party ticket? Or running as a Democrat or Republican and winning the primary?
If you actually had a shot at winning as a third party candidate, you’d have a much much better shot joining one of the major parties and winning that party’s nomination, and then cleaning up in the general election. If you had no chance of winning either major party nomination, then you’ve got no chance of winning the general either. So if you’re Donald Trump, you run as a Republican even though you don’t actually give a shit about the Republican party, and when you win the nomination the Republicans fall in line behind you. Or if you’re Bernie Sanders you run as a Democrat, and if you win you’ve got the Democrats behind you. Obviously you’ve got to win the primary, but if you can’t do that then what good are you?
The only way this could change is if a third party became an actual third party, running candidates for office and winning regularly. Then the third party organization could help you run for office. Otherwise you’re not really running as a third party candidate, you’re running as an independent, which is a recipe for disaster.
Kang: Go ahead, throw your vote away. Ah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-haaaaa!
The way the system is set up now, without a revolution, I can’t see it happening. And a real revolution might give a one party system. Which is pretty much what we have now.
The elephants and asses have the country by the balls. They will NEVER let it go.
we’d need instant runoff voting; that way, there would be no wasted “spoiler” votes. But both D and R parties know that; its not gonna happen without a huge grassroots groundswell.
I’ve been voting for a third party since I reached adulthood. No results. I think we might need a bloody revolution.
The most important thing would be how to validate the actual vote count. As long as the counting could be manipulated (fixed), the end result would always be what the two party system wanted.
It is in both their interests to keep control.
In the current system, the only potential way I could see it happening is if an extremely popular sitting POTUS decided to drop affiliation with the party that put him in the WH, and decided to build a new, third party. That would cost serious money, time, and party infrastructure. That would take years… even decades to develop unless a significant number of people from both the republican and democratic parties would switch allegiance to the new third party.
Hell, look at how popular Sanders is. He could have taken a stab at it this year as a 3rd party candidate, but he is bound to the national two-party system.
I don’t know how long the Green Party has been around, but it hardly makes a ripple.
I think at this moment what it would take is the sudden death of a main party candidate on the eve of an election.
Third parties fail to recruit, except right before presidentials, which is when people are really fired up about being a Republican or a Democrat, and many declared Independents have developed enough hatred for one candidate, that they are afraid to vote for whom they really want, and feel they must vote for the lesser of two evils, and keep the person they really, really hate out of the White House. After the elections, the Independents want to listen, but the third party leaders have moved back into the woodwork.
Recruiting needs to work hard in the down time between elections, to increase the 3rd party’s visibility. Third parties need to get so many members that the can have ballots in the primaries in states that have primaries. If the poll workers, instead of saying “Republican or Democrat?” said “Republican, Democrat, Green, or Libertarian?” and a percentage of the poll workers represented the new parties, that would legitimize them, and make people think they weren’t throwing away their vote. It would also mean the candidates would get asked to the presidential debates, and their conventions would be televised with as much anticipation as any other.
This…this is exactly how, historically, it worked. You don’t see any Federalists or Whigs anymore because those parties became defunct when what were 3rd parties before (such as the Republican Party) basically cut into their voter base and superseded them as the other 2nd party. What you’d need to have happen is for the 3rd party to start running people for lower offices…and winning. At the same time, you’d need one of the big two to start really losing popular support. Eventually, the 3rd party who is on the rise would basically supersede either the Republican or Democratic party who would either die or be integrated into the new major party. Then that previously 3rd party could run a candidate for president with an actual chance to win the presidency.
In our current system there is little to no chance that a 3rd party candidate could hope to win. They rarely get more than a percentage or two of the total vote.
First thing is that Satan would have to buy some long underwear. Next thing is that the 3rd party would have to win some other offices to establish themselves as at least a viable minority party. Should this happen, either one of the major parties would undercut them and adopt their principles or one of the major parties would g belly up. So realistically it is impossible to happen, the system is really built around two and only two viable parties.
And we’re never going to have more than three TV networks. CBS, ABC and NBC will control programming forever.
I agree that a viable third party Presidential candidate (“viable” meaning “has a chance to win”) depends on establishing a viable third party. I think it could happen, but it’s not going to be sideshows like the Green Party or the Libertarians.
Preferential Voting Methods Which my pessimism says is exactly why it will never happen on a national presidential scale.
It’s interesting. They apparently liked Sanders ideas, like college tuition, etc. Sanders worked hard and got most of these put in as planks. After getting most of what he asked for, he then endorsed Hillary.
Now, either you like and trust Sanders and his ideas or you dont. But if you were a enthusiastic supporter, why would you waste all his hard work by not going along with his endorsement?