The following is an excerpt from Gallup News.
After reaching a high of 62% at the start of 2021, the percentage of Americans believing the existing political parties “do such a poor job that a third major party is needed” has returned to a more typical 56%.
At the same time, four in 10 Americans do not see the need for a third party, agreeing that “the Republican and Democratic parties do an adequate job of representing the American people.”
The 56% of Americans who currently believe the country would benefit from a third major party roughly matches the average 55% holding this view across Gallup’s trend, since 2003.
Support was much lower in that initial measure (at 40%) than it has been in most years since.
Independents Maintain Above-Average Third-Party Preference
Desire for a third major party has always been much higher among political independents than either Democrats or Republicans, and that continues in 2022.
However, after varying between 2003 and 2012, independents’ support has been consistently high over the past decade, not falling below 70% since 2013. And it has been especially high, near 75%, since September 2021.
Republicans and Democrats have expressed relatively similar levels of support for third parties over the years.
However, in two periods when Republican presidents were in power, Democrats’ support for a third party was significantly higher than Republicans’.
Moderate/Liberal Republicans Increasingly Favor a Third Party
Further differences in support for a third party are seen when combining respondents’ party preference and their political ideology.
According to combined 2021-2022 data that span Biden’s term thus far, large majorities of independents (74%) and moderate/liberal Republicans (60%) are in favor of having a third major party.
Support falls to a bare majority of liberal Democrats (51%), followed by less than half of conservative Republicans (45%) and barely a third of moderate/conservative Democrats (35%).
These findings could reveal differences in each group’s contentment with their own party’s political players, as well as dissatisfaction with the opposing party.
Read full survey results here.
3rd parties act only as spoilers in our 2 party, winner-takes-all system. Too often the result is that the worst candidate (the one with views least aligned with a majority of voters) wins. We cannot split the “right-leaning” votes and win; that usually results in the leftist winning. 3rd party candidates should run as D or R in the primary.
Having said that, we should encourage as many left-leaning 3rd party candidates as possible in ALL elections. In fact, we should start running some ourselves. Split the leftist vote so Rs win.
The blind spot in these polls is to ask people who are already involved in the two party false dichotomy. If you were to include the number of people who have decided that voting and participating in the facade is pointless you’d have I suspect about 75% of the country who would support this hypothetical political party that isn’t the GOP or Democrats.
In case the people have not noticed/realized, there is a new party in politics. One might say there are 2 new parties as the old democrat party has shifted so far to the left they no longer represent moderate democrats. At the same time, Trump has transformed the republican party to more of a populist, working class party to the point it is no longer the corporate class big money party. The TEA Party began the transformation, moving the GOP towards a more Constitutional party but with the democrats push to the left the GOP needed a Trump like force to push it hard right.
Hard right is NOT a racist, homophobic, sexist party the lame stream media claims it to be, it is all encompassing for those who want to conserve the idea this nation was founded on.
There is an evolution going on. Republicans are choosing between an old but shrinking hawkish, say a lot and do little GOP and a more populist and inclusive GOP that’s more for the American citizen, getting things done and less deep state. Democrats are dealing with a woke, socialist leaning, big government, new world order side and a more moderate wing that seems to be increasingly pushed aside and bullied into compliance with the collective. IMHO it’s becoming increasingly easier to find common ground in the GOP and increasingly unsettling for middle America to be comfortable with what the Democrat party stands for.
I’m not sure how valid this article is but America has needed other political parties for a long time…neither major party represents my interests…..try this sometime, look up the party platforms of dems, rebubs and libertarians: dem platform represents my interest about 15% (not a fan of 80 pages of micromanaging every aspect of one’s life with nanny-state government overreach) ; repub platforms represents my interests about 40% ( not a fan of their support of war, pharma, patriot act, etc.); libertarian about 70%…..so, I don’t really have a party fully representing my interests……
I wonder what percent of the Independent voters today were registered as Democrats or as Republicans in 2016, and ended up “jumping ship” out of disgust with the entrenched “leadership” in whichever party they abandoned. I doubt that any third party, whichever direction they leaned in, would ever be able to win any elections because most of the ex-Democrats would fear that voting for a new left-leaning third party candidate would only serve to get an (ugh) Republican elected, while most of the ex-Republicans would be equally afraid that voting for a new right-leaning third party candidate would only serve to get an (ugh) Democrat elected.
What we really need is two new parties. One would be intended to completely replace the Republicans the way the then-new Republican party replaced the Whigs in the 1850s, resulting in the election of Lincoln as the first Republican president in 1860. The other one would be intended to replace the current Democratic party in much the same way. The key to their success would be for the two new parties to work closely with each other in a friendly and respectful manner. Each of them would have their own website where ordinary party members could engage in debates with each other over the party platform, and where they could directly elect their own party leaders. The two parties could also arrange for regular online debates between members of the opposing parties, recordings of which would be available on both of their websites. The one big thing that both parties would be in steadfast agreement with each other about is the importance of respecting and protecting the very same Constitution that resulted in America becoming a world leader. They might even call themselves something like the Constitutional Republic Party and the Constitutional Democracy Party, and make a demonstrated knowledge and understanding of both their state and national constitutions a condition for being nominated by the party as a candidate for any elected office. They would also need to be serious about term limits, avoiding the creation of a class of professional politicians.
Who might be the “thought leaders” who could inspire and coordinate the creation of these two new parties? For the Constitutional Democracy Party I can envision, for example, folks like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Naomi Wolf and Del Bigtree taking the lead as disaffected Democrats. The Constitutional Republic Party might be created by people like Ron DeSantis, Kristi Noem, Ron Johnson and Tom Massey. As different as their political perspectives might be, I can’t imagine that individuals like those just named from the opposing camps would have any difficulty working with “the other side” in a friendly and mutually beneficial fashion.
Sharyl, I’m sure you would have no difficulty in getting in touch with thought leaders like those on both sides, planting the seeds of the two-new-parties idea and encouraging them to start talking with each other about how they can cooperatively get both new balls rolling simultaneously. I hope that’s something you might consider doing. If successful, you just might go down in history as the leading savior of the currently rotting American political system.
We can save the republican party with timely expulsions of RINOs and support of true conservatives.