May 8, 2021
Former President Donald Trump has claimed at times that he’ll start a third political party called the Patriot Party. In fact, most Americans — 62% in a recent poll — say they’d welcome the chance to vote for a third party.
In almost any other democracy, those Americans would get their wish. In the Netherlands, for instance, even a small “third” party called the Party for the Animals — composed of animal rights supporters, not dogs and cats — won 3.2% of the legislative vote in 2017 and earned five seats, out of 150, in the national legislature.
Yet in the U.S., candidates for the House of Representatives from the Libertarian Party, the most successful of U.S. minor parties, won not a single House seat in 2020, though Libertarians got over a million House votes. Neither did the Working Families Party, with 390,000 votes, or the Legalize Marijuana Now Party, whose U.S. Senate candidate from Minnesota won 185,000 votes.