It’s been nearly 140 years since Millard Fillmore, a Whig, left office, and we’ve had nothing but Democrats and Republicans ever since. Third-party and independent candidates are never serious contenders.
Under what circumstances could a party other than the two that have shared power for almost a century and a half field a viable candidate, let alone win the office? Would it take the collapse of one party to create a void, or is it possible for a third party to gain enough influence to challenge the other two? Will it happen gradually or suddenly?
Naw…it would happen when/if either of the two parties in question loses enough popular support while some rising 3rd party gains it. Say that the Republicans had taken more of a hit in 2009, to the point where they were losing most national and local elections. Say the Tea Party became much, much more popular with a much broader populist base and agenda, and they had won many national or local elections AS the Tea Party. Instead of the Tea Party being subsumed into the Republican Party, it’s entirely possible that the Republican Party would have fallen apart and the Tea Party basically emerged as the new major party to replace the Republicans. Most likely much of the dying Republican Party would then be subsumed into the new Tea Party, though I suppose some of it might have gone to other 3rd parties, maybe new 3rd parties, or stayed as a new 3rd party Republican Party. It’s happened before in the US…just not lately. And with the big tent view that the parties have now, it’s unlikely that any would fall that far…but it’s always a possibility.
The only way to accomplish that is to vote for 3rd party, independent, etc. candidates from the local level up. If people did that regularly, and these candidates started filling offices, eventually we would have a viable 3rd party. Counter to that, as long as we have “3rd party” candidates who are really nothing more than established party candidates using a different name ( care for a cup of tea? ), status quo is the result. ( or worse, in the form of ever escalating gridlock. )
I predict that within 50 years, tops, we will have a President who is a member of a party which is not recognizable as either of the current major parties. The name of that president’s party might still be “Democratic” or “Republican”, though. The parties change all the time; it’s just the names that hold on through inertia.
It’s my understanding that “National Union Party” was what the Republican Party called itself for a couple of election cycles in the wake of the Civil War, so I didn’t count them as an actual third party. But as nitpicks go, I’ll allow it.
In fact, it helps make Chronos’s point to realize that Abe Lincoln’s party bore little to no resemblance to today’s Republicans. And not a little ironic when you realize which side the people who were behind this year’s secession petitions would more likely identify with.
My hope is that the Republican party continues to lose demographic support, and in the next 10 or 20 years becomes a purely regional party with no chance at winning at the national level- and then a liberal party can split off from the Democrats, with the two main national parties being the new liberals (on the left) and the Democrats (corporate centrists, pretty close to where they are now), neither party being totally batshit.
When Republocrat candidates finally become so odious that even Republocrat voters can’t stand to vote for them. One advocating actively sabotaging the War on Terror with useless, counter-productive torture and the other shitting on the Sixth Amendment by arguing that he should have the power to have you locked up for the rest of your life without trial or evidence is apparently not sufficient. Maybe if they start eating babies on national TV.
No, the National Union Party was distinct from the Republicans. It was essentially a wartime coalition party of pro-Union Democrats and Republicans joined together in a show of national unity. Lincoln, of course, had been a Republican (and a Whig before that) but Johnson had been a Democrat and would go back to the Democratic Party when he made his post-presidential Senate run.
That, and a fringe group of Republicans led by John C. Fremont formed their own splinter party, leaving the centrist National Union. The so-formed “Radical Democracy Party” dropped out when Lincoln removed the Postmaster General (Montgomery Blair), a former Radical who had turned back to the mainstream. National Union might well be said to be the most successful of the “alternative” parties, but the Civil War had rendered traditional politics so chaotic that 1864 probably shouldn’t be called a case study of anything normal.
With the rise of the internet, I don’t think it’ll be ‘that’ long. And by ‘that’ long I mean about 20-30 years.
If the two party system keeps up and people feel there is no option, I could see corporations or individuals pooling their money to run a candidate if they find the 2 candidates unlikable.
Obama and Romney raised/spent about a billion dollars each. That sounds like a lot, but 5 million people each giving $200 would do the same thing. If you could get 5 million people with the same ideology to pool their resources, I could see a 3rd party candidate going vital.
But that wouldn’t be in the first round of elections. At first both parties would try to keep the third party off the ballots, off the debates, etc. But over time they would probably work their way in.
The problem is how do you get a candidate with enough broad appeal to cross partisan lines and win support from voters on both sides (it seems both parties have become more and more divided. Then again that could just be the 30ish percent who are members of the base. The other 70% of voters may actually be more flexible)? I suppose one who was motivated mostly by economics could do that. They could promote progressive economic policies like higher min wage, labor rights, progressive taxes but also be hostile to immigrants and win support from that.
There was a group that tried that this year, but it didn’t work very well (Americans Elect - Wikipedia). I think (as bobot suggested above) that the way to go is for a third party to start with Congressional and Senatorial races (and state races) before running a presidential candidate.
My recollection of '92 was that Perot was doing pretty well until he dropped out for awhile and then threw his hat back in. While he ended up with no electoral votes, he did grab almost 20% of the popular vote. Looking up the Wikipedia article, he apparently was leading 39%-31%-25% (Perot-Bush-Clinton) in June, before he dropped out of the race in July for a few weeks.