Can Elon Musk Shatter America’s Two-Party System?
A viable third is the big white whale in American politics – but Elon Musk seems ready to try it anyway.
Frustrated by the support of the Republican legislators to the major bill, the richest man in the world has repeatedly launched the idea of forming a new “American party” to respond to disgruntled tax and libertarian conservatives. Musk even threatened to finance primary challenges against Congress GOP members who supported the bill. (Related: Big Tech whistles while World goes into Trump-Musk roller coaster)
But political experts say that its billions would be better spent buying it in the structure of the existing GOP party rather than harming a new viable political force capable of questioning the rooted bipartite duopoly of America.
“Third parties are like bees – they sting and then die,” said Georgetown’s political historian Michael Kazin, at Daily Caller News Foundation.
It is obvious with the crazy expenses of this bill, which increases the debt ceiling by a record of five dollars of dollars that we live in a country with single party – Porky Pig Party !!
It is time for a new political party that really cares about people.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 30, 2025
American history is strewn with third-party offers that sailed brilliantly only to move away, he explained. George Wallace carried five southern states in 1968 and Ross Perot won almost 19% of the popular vote in 1992 – but none fell for the chairmanship.
Such efforts tend to hit a structural wall, said Kazin. The mathematics of the winner of the electoral college mean that a new party should gain squarely in several states to have a shot – a practically impossible task without moving one of the main existing parties. Congress races are also ruthless: the first step has given little room for suitors for third parties except as spoilers.
Only Maine and Alaska direct each race to the state level under the classified choice vote – the Columbia district recently forced it – even if sixteen red states have rushed to ban the system. According to a study by March, nearly a bulletin of twenty out of twenty-twirling in the classified choice elections was ill-filled, which analyzed more than three million voting bulletins in Alaska, Maine, New York and San Francisco.
Kazin added that when foreign movements persist, they usually start small.
“Structurally, third parties should start by showing strength in a state or region,” he said, calling him “an error … to try to run the national time the first time.” He underlined the populists of the 1890s – who won the governors and the legislatures of the States through the plains before entering – as well as the bastion of Dixie de Wallace and the first accent of Perot on Texas as proof that the lasting change, if this happens, is built locally before emerging on the national scene.
If this crazy expense bill, the America party will be formed the next day.
Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican Unitarty so that the people really have a voice.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 30, 2025
However, the public appetite for an alternative is voracious. Almost two -thirds of the Americans in a Gallup survey in 2023 agreed that a “third major party” was necessary – a level of frustration with the republican -democratic duopoly which persisted for more than a decade. But so far, this dissatisfaction has never translated as a new party capable of upsetting the system.
For Musk, the challenge is deeper than structural obstacles. His brand of libertarianism – Philosophy centered on minimal government and maximum individual freedom – does not have the mass district necessary to support a political movement.
The figures are overwhelming. Applicants of the Libertarian Party have on average only 1% of the presidential vote since 2000, with 3.3% of Gary Johnson in 2016 being an aberrant value. Kentucky Rand Paul’s Republican Senator, undoubtedly the most libertarian member of the Senate, finished fifth in the caucus of Iowa 2016 before abandoning – a humiliating reminder that even the state that elected it also designed the Republican Senator Mitch McConnell in Washington. (Linked: more voters deciding that they prefer to be called something other than a democrat)
“Liberty was undoubtedly the central ideology of the party under Ronald Reagan … Trump changed the republican party,” said Kazin.
Is it time to create a new political party in America that really represents 80% in the middle?
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2025
However, Musk’s money could still have enormous importance in the structure of the existing party. The Senate leadership fund has shown how targeted species can restart a primary card; The Super PAC paid nearly $ 8 million in the Alabama special elections in 2017 to support the former Senator Luther Strange to the hard challengers and later spent about $ 5 million in 2022 to protect the Republican Centrist Alaska, Senator Lisa Murkowski in a insurgement supported by Trump, according to the Washington Post – Fold the gelop to its test
However, money is not a foolproof way to earn elections. Musk paid a record of $ 22 million in the Supreme Court of Wisconsin in April – the money that supported the conservative Brad Schimel, but has still not been able to prevent the liberal judge Susan Crawford from winning nearly nine points. The political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Barry Burden [Musk’s] resources but keep it in the background.
Democrats learned the same bitter lesson in 2024. Opensecret data show that former vice -president Kamala Harris more than a billion dollars – but Trump has always won a decisive college victory and swept away each swing state with less than half of the campaign funds.
But campaign financing law could further complicate the future of the “American party”.
Bradley Smith, former president of the Federal Electoral Commission (FEC), told CNN that “jurisprudence suggests that some of the organizational activities of a party and the start of a party can be financed with greater contributions, until it is really eligible for party status under the regulations of the electoral commission.”
“You can finance Super Pacs whatever you want,” he said. “But you cannot finance a political party, like a strange part of American law.”
In the end, Kazin suggested that Musk’s flirt with a third -party race would probably remain more rhetorical than practical.
“The idea he goes, alone, to be able to find a party that could make a difference – yes, that seems to me to be whimsical,” said Kazin, adding that “many people think he is a bit foreign. I think that is probably also against him, especially among the conservatives who have trained to be great American patriots.”
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