For decades, Americans have been grumbling about their two-party political system. The complaints have only grown more bipartisan.
According to Gallup, 58% of U.S. adults believe a third major party is needed. For a 12th year in a row, Gallup has recorded majority support for the idea.
Among independents, that number rises to 69%. Even 53% of Democrats and 48% of Republicans say they want an alternative.
Highlights
- Surveys show that a big majority of American adults believe a third major political party is needed.
- Elon Musk proposed launching a third party, called the 'America Party', after his fallout with U.S. President Donald Trump.
- Past third-party efforts like Ross Perot's Reform Party showed strong votes but failed to win electoral power due to structural challenges.
American adults want a third party, and Musk is offering that
Image credits: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Enter billionaire, Elon Musk.
This year, Musk took social media and U.S. President Donald Trump through a storm by floating the idea of launching a new political party, called the America Party.
The reality of this party is debatable, considering that Musk hasn’t filed any official paperwork or begun collecting signatures in key states. But this is not to be taken lightly, considering he has the money, the influence, and the media gravity to shift the conversation, if not the outcome.
Musk has spent millions of dollars backing several presidential campaigns, including Trump’s 2024 campaign, for which he was the biggest donor. There’s nothing to stop him from sponsoring his own presidential run or supporting another candidate for a third party.
So the question is on the table: Can Musk or someone like him break the grip of Democrats and Republicans? Can a third party do more than play spoiler?
The short answer: it’s incredibly hard.
The U.S. has operated under a two-party system since before the Civil War. The Republican Party became the dominant rival to Democrats in 1854, and no third party has ever come close to replacing either one. Some, like the Libertarians and Greens, have earned national attention but little actual power. Others, like Ross Perot’s Reform Party, made a splash and then faded.
Image credits: The Reform Party
Perot introduced a centrist political party that won 18.9% of the vote in 1992, an astonishing figure for a non-major candidate. But he won zero electoral votes and didn’t put a single candidate in Congress. His party collapsed under infighting and structural pressure.
Musk brings something different: enormous resources and unrivaled visibility.
He’s hinted that his America Party would start by targeting a few House and Senate seats, not the presidency. The aim would be to become a swing bloc in Congress.
Musk hinted that the party could potentially be a swing bloc in Congress
Image credits: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
That’s a more realistic start than launching a full-scale presidential run, which would require qualifying in 50 states and organizing ground operations.
Musk’s best-case scenario may end up mirroring past third-party experiments. As Jake Lahut of Wired notes, the most Musk could realistically hope for is something akin to Ross Perot’s Reform Party.
The Reform Party was formed in a state where Americans were disillusioned with the state of politics and found it to be corrupt. The current political situation mirrors this sentiment.
More than half of the respondents in a survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) on Trump’s first 100 days in office believe that Trump is a “dangerous dictator” who poses a threat to democracy, given that he overstepped his authority in firing federal employees.
Image credits: Axios
To add to this, discontent within both parties has made some current and former lawmakers potential recruits for Musk.
These include Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who opposed Trump’s major spending bill, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and earned Musk’s praise. Others include Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, and former House members Peter Meijer and Justin Amash, the latter of whom briefly became a Libertarian during his time in Congress.
Andrew Yang, who launched his own Forward Party after leaving the Democratic fold, said he’s been in touch with Musk. Yang has used his party to get more states to change their election laws to favor open primaries and ranked choice voting, where voters rank candidates by preference instead of choosing just one.
“There are multiple members of Congress who could be enlisted to a new party,” Yang told Wired.
“There’s a lot of discontent within existing officeholders who are at odds with their own party. That combined with races that could be contested by independents opens up a lot of opportunities.”
However, Philip Bump from The Washington Post writes that the U.S. doesn't need a political party to bring changes. He argues that Musk can get sympathetic politicians elected, as may wealthy people do.
“Musk has enough money to keep it going for a long time, and he may have a good candidate here or there, but for the most part, you know—remember Jesse Ventura when he won governor of Minnesota? He had no natural base from the Republicans or the Democrats in his legislature, so nobody supported him,” said Former Trump White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley.
Image credits: The White House/Flickr
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis suggested Musk’s new party would have “a monumental impact,” but only if it focused on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, and later another amendment on congressional term limits.
However, DeSantis cautioned that this could help the Democrats win by taking away Republican votes.
History suggests third parties are more likely to spoil elections than win them. Previous third parties such as Unity08, No Labels, and Americans Elect have been in the ideological center. The parties don't win, but end up dividing the votes, which may work against the other parties.
“If Republicans view Democrats extremely negatively, how many of them are going to rush to support a third party that might increase the odds a Democrat gets elected?” Bump asked in his article.
Most third parties have failed, creating the two-party system in Congress
Image credits: Gallup
A way that the America Party could succeed, as Politico’s Alexander Burns notes, is by disrupting the conversation entirely, just as Trump did from the right and Bernie Sanders from the left.
To be effective, Musk's party would need to sidestep the left-right axis and seize issues where both parties have left voters cold.
Politico outlines three such opportunities: championing free trade, radically rebalancing fiscal debt, and building America’s technological supremacy.
While the realization of this party still depends on Musk going through with it, the problem isn’t that America only has two parties.
It is that while polls show American’s want a third party, voter registration doesn’t back it up.
The top five minor parties in the country don’t even claim 2% of voters combined.
In reality, there are several parties in the country. As of 2025, there at least 55 distinct ballot-qualified political parties, with the biggest ones being the Green Party, Libertarian Party, Constitution Party, and even the Socialist Party.
So, while there are parties for every political leaning, there isn’t a need for people in many states to register with them, Bump explains.
Image credits: Jeff Goins/X
There is also not a lot of institutional power within the parties themselves. It is still unclear who the America Party actually aims to serve: the people or Musk himself.
None of this even matters if Musk doesn’t follow through; and he is known for his shifting priorities. His time leading DOGE ended in a flurry of controversy. His break with Trump was loud. His shareholders may soon press him to stay out of politics entirely.
“At some point,” one Democratic strategist told WIRED, “They take the keys away from him.”
It's a long road ahead for Musk to create a third political party
Image credits: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
If he does follow through, there are more questions—starting with who is going to donate to a billionaire's party, even if he personally funds most of it? Who will volunteer, go on election campaigns, and knock on doors for Musk? Who will sign up for the America Party and get elected?
And yet, many third parties have managed to secure funding, build campaign teams, recruit candidates, and have still failed. So what’s to say that Musk’s party will end up being another pipe dream?