BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

Why Third Parties Can't Compete

This article is more than 10 years old.

In a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released on May 12, 83% of Americans said there are serious problems with our two-party system. Many have repeatedly said that they want more choices than just those offered by the Republicans and Democrats. Unfortunately, the Constitution essentially makes third parties unviable. But there are still ways we could improve politics without upending a system that has on balance worked pretty well for more than 200 years.

One option for reform that always comes up is a parliamentary system like the one in Great Britain. It's hard not to be jealous of a country where a national election lasts less than a month from beginning to end, while our presidential election cycle never seems to end. And those whose views don't fit neatly into those of our two major parties would have more options in a parliamentary system, where third parties such as Germany's Free Democrats often hold the balance of power and have major influence.

TheStreet: Financial Reform Falls Short Without GSEs

One problem with a parliamentary system, however, is a lack of permanence. Change is inherent in the nature of any system where the executive necessarily has control of the legislative branch. Obviously, this is mitigated in cases such as Britain's where the Conservative Party needed the support of the Liberal Democrats to form a government. But in principle, a prime minister always has the votes for things like the budget, taxes and other issues that are often very contentious here even when the president's party controls both houses of Congress.

Consequently, actions taken when one party controls the parliament are often undone relatively easily when the other party gets control, as it inevitably does. In our system, that's much harder. The Founding Fathers wanted legislation to be relatively difficult to enact and equally difficult to change once enacted--that's why we have two houses of the legislature with different terms, procedures and election rules, and a president who may or may not be of the party controlling either house of Congress.

The Founding Fathers were also deeply skeptical of having the president beholden to the legislature for his position. The Constitutional Convention debated this topic on July 17, 1787, and rejected the idea of a parliamentary system unanimously. According to James Madison's notes, the delegates felt strongly that the president ought to be elected by all the people. Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania said that having the legislature appoint our chief executive would be "the work of intrigue, of cabal, and of faction...real merit will rarely be the title to the appointment."

On the other hand, the Founding Fathers were not too keen on pure democracy and rejected the idea of having the president elected by simple majority vote. They feared that a candidate who was very popular in one region of the country might too easily be elected without much if any support elsewhere. The Founding Fathers wanted to ensure that the president enjoyed broad support throughout the country and that small states were not ignored.

The compromise that the Constitution implemented was the Electoral College, which is the institution that formally elects our presidents. Each state has votes equal to the sum of its senators and representatives. Thus no state has less than three votes. And candidates must have an absolute majority in the Electoral College--270 votes--to become president.

The necessity of getting an absolute majority in the Electoral College is the main thing that has made third parties unviable in America. In practice, it is impossible for a third party to ever elect a president, which might be possible if the president was elected by popular vote or by a plurality of the Electoral College. As a practical matter, it's prohibitively difficult for a third party to be consistently competitive even at the state or local level without the possibility of ever electing a president.

The problem for third parties is compounded by restrictive ballot access laws and other barriers that the major parties have erected to protect their de facto monopoly. Single-member congressional districts and first-past-the-post election rules also tend to favor the two-party system.


Finally, expansion of the federal government in the 20th century tended to snuff out third parties that were active at the state and local level in the 19th century. As national concerns increasingly dominated elections, voters were less inclined to support parties that only had a local focus. At the same time, the major parties worked hard to co-opt third party issues and fold their supporters into their membership.

Of course, that hasn't stopped candidates from occasionally challenging the two-party monopoly, but none has ever made it to the White House. The most successful third-party candidate in history was Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, who got 27.4% of the popular vote and carried six states. The next most successful third-party candidate was Ross Perot in 1992. Although he got 18.9% of the popular vote, he carried no states.

Nevertheless, public opinion polls consistently show that a high percentage of Americans would like to have a third party. A CNN/Opinion Research poll in February found almost two-thirds of Americans favoring a third party in addition to the Republicans and Democrats. On the other hand, a CBS/New York Times poll that same month found that three-fifths of people don't think a third party would make much difference in terms of giving them more say in government.

Generally speaking, third parties have either been vehicles for high-profile individuals with a personal following or rigid ideological interests such as the Libertarian and Green parties. The major impact of ideological parties, however, is to drain votes away from the major party closest to their position. Green Party votes mostly come at the expense of Democrats, and those of the Libertarian Party mainly come from the Republicans.

Perhaps more important, third parties divert activists who would otherwise work within the major parties to achieve their goals into organizations that have no real electoral influence. In this sense, third parties are not merely impotent, but have perverse consequences, making the major parties less sensitive to their concerns.

Historically, this has been a good thing. Forcing extremists to work within the major parties to achieve their goals has tended to temper their extremism by forcing them to win support from those that may share their philosophy but not their priorities, build coalitions and consider issues beyond their narrow interest. By contrast, those who operate only within third parties just reinforce each other's extremism and frustration over their inevitable failure, often leading to complete disengagement from the political process.

One option I have long favored for giving third parties more influence without the necessity of changing the Constitution or abandoning the two-party system would be fusion voting. Under such a system, third parties could cross-endorse major party candidates and have their votes aggregated. Such a system has long operated in New York, which has a Conservative Party, Liberal Party and many others. Oregon has recently adopted this system as well.

The main benefit of fusion voting is that it would force major party candidates to seek the additional nomination of third parties and work to accommodate their interests. In New York, for example, the failure of a Republican candidate to also secure the Conservative Party nomination virtually guarantees defeat.

Fusion voting also allows for interesting alliances and provides useful information to voters. A Republican with cross endorsement from the Liberal Party might be viable in a heavily Democratic area. Those who would never vote for a Republican might be willing to do so by pulling the Liberal lever.


Fusion voting thus makes third parties an important part of the political system. Without it, people mostly feel that their votes are wasted on a third party candidate because the odds are so heavily stacked against them. Fusion voting also encourages fringe voters to participate in the political system, rather than being alienated from it.

Political reform is something that ought to be on the national agenda. Elimination of the Electoral College or going to a parliamentary system would probably require another constitutional convention to be seriously considered. But there is nothing to stop the states from empowering third parties by easing ballot access and allowing fusion voting.

I think such a reform would encourage many voters turned off by the major parties to become active in electoral politics and provide them with an institutional vehicle for doing so. It would also create a formal system whereby major party candidates would be forced to seek the approval and endorsement of groups that they would otherwise be able to easily ignore.

Bruce Bartlett is a former Treasury Department economist and the author of Reaganomics: Supply-Side Economics in Action and The New American Economy: The Failure of Reaganomics and a New Way Forward. He writes a weekly column for Forbes.

Read more Forbes Opinions here.