Where does Musk's 'America Party' have a chance of succeeding?
- Harrison Moore
- 4 days ago
- 9 min read
On July 5th, Elon Musk announced (for real this time) that he is planning on forming a new political party to confront what he sees as the “Democratic-Republican uniparty” in Washington. Although the new outfit does not yet have a formal party infrastructure or leader, it has been christened with the uninspired name of the “America Party”.
Although it has made headlines, the road ahead for the upstart party is steep. The American two-party system is staggeringly dominant; the two parties and (close allies) hold every seat in Congress and every state governorship and have rotated the presidency between them since before the civil war.
Evidently, Elon Musk has the financial heft to properly fund a new party. However, he will struggle to overcome structural factors conspiring to prevent alternatives to the two major parties from gaining ballot access, and his candidates will struggle to overcome America’s fierce partisanship. His decision to focus on only a small number of key congressional races next year suggests he understands these challenges, and this article will explore where he is best placed for a breakthrough.
America’s Unique Two-Party System
It is startling just how entrenched the American two-party system is. The two alternative parties that receive the most attention during presidential election campaigns, the Greens and the Libertarians, do not hold a single seat in Congress or indeed any state legislature. Every single one of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives is held by a Democrat or a Republican, and while the Senate boasts two independents (out of 100 seats), both of these (Angus King and Bernie Sanders) are members of the Democratic caucus for the purpose of committee assignments.
If we want to know whether Musk’s party could break through this duopoly and win some elected representation, we should first consider how the two parties have become, and remain, so predominant. The first (and most reddit) explanation is found in the country’s electoral system. At almost every level (more on the exceptions below), American elections use single-member districts where the candidate or individual with the most votes wins, even if they only have a slight plurality of the vote. According to Duverger’s Law, such systems naturally tend towards only two dominant parties because voters do not want to waste their votes on the perfect candidate if they are unlikely to win. Over time, voters understand that third parties can act as spoilers, by splitting the vote among similar candidates, allowing an opponent to win in a divided field. This eventually leads to the marginalisation of third parties.
The spoiler effect does seem to explain voter behaviour in elections with high-profile third party candidates. In the 2016 presidential election, Libertarian Gary Johnson averaged 8-10% in polls conducted in summer 2016, as voters were repelled by Clinton and Trump. However, as election day drew nearer the stakes of the election became more salient, Johnson’s polling average declined to just 4.4% in November. He would go on to win just 3.1%.
However, other Western Democracies with similar winner-takes-all electoral systems do not have the complete two-party domination that the US has. Britain’s House of Commons, like the US’s House of Representatives, is elected in a large number of single-member constituencies. The press coverage leading up to the 2024 election framed the election as a choice between the Conservative and Labour leader to be Prime Minister. Nevertheless, almost a fifth of Parliamentary seats and 43% of the vote went to parties other than Labour and the Conservatives. Canada’s recent election saw the highest combined vote share for that country’s two major parties since 1958, but smaller parties still carried 30/343 seats in the House of Commons. The US’s two-party system is an outlier even among countries with similar voting systems.
At this point, many will point their finger at another outlier in the American system: the amount of money spent on political campaigns. American political campaigns are truly awash with money compared with other democracies, including Canada and Britain, whose elections feature strict spending caps and advertising rules. Advocates claim these features level the playing field for smaller candidates, while the costs of running a viable campaign in the US pose an insurmountable barrier to entry for upstart parties.
Ordinarily, there is a lot of truth in this. However, Musk is already the largest individual donor in US politics, having donated more than a quarter of a billion dollars in the 2024 election cycle (less than 0.1% of his net worth). Musk should have the resources to mount a viable campaign in even a large state’s senate race.
Getting On the Ballot
But all of these resources are for nought if Musk cannot even get his candidates’ names on the ballot. Rules surrounding ballot access in the U.S. are notoriously complex and vary dramatically from state to state. In many cases, third-party candidates must gather tens of thousands of signatures, meet early filing deadlines, or navigate legal challenges from the major parties. After billionaire Ross Perot won 19% of the vote in America’s 1992 presidential election, he set up a new party, the Reform Party. Russell Verney, a former Reform Party chair, has noted that in the US it is impossible for a party to register with the Federal Election Commission until its candidates have won votes in multiple states running as independents. “You have to actually get votes in many states in order to obtain and retain ballot access”. Many parties “have tried that and failed.”
The crux is that the two dominant parties in the US are not really parties in the way Brits, or Europeans, or the Chinese Communist Party, or India’s BJP would understand it. The Democratic and Republican parties aren’t organisations with formal membership, but rather lines on an election ballot. When registering to vote, Americans are prompted to choose which party they will register under, so that they can participate in that party’s primaries. This process, whereby voters acquire the ability to select candidates on behalf of a “party”, is controlled by the government, rather than the parties themselves, who have no say over the matter and therefore no ability to vet their own candidates.
To make matters worse for third parties, many states offer voters the option to simply press a button to vote a straight party ticket. This feature automatically selects every candidate from their chosen party in one go, helping one party to sweep all offices up at once and to make it even harder for insurgents to gain a large share of the vote.
There have been rare exceptions to two-party dominance. The 2010 Colorado gubernatorial election saw the hard-right Constitution Party win 36% of the vote, temporarily giving it major party status and automatic spot on the ballot. Unfortunately for its supporters, the Constitution Party lost major party status at the next election, as it did not field a candidate for governor. In summary, Musk’s money will allow him to compete in advertising and organisation with the major parties in the key races he hopes to target. However, building the America Party into a bona fide member of a three-party system will be a test of the billionaire’s patience, as he will need to garner large vote shares in multiple elections.
Where in America Can the America Party Go?
In light of these structural challenges, Elon Musk’s stated goal of seriously competing for only two or three Senate seats and ten house seats seems, if nothing else, grounded in political reality. Musk should prioritise seats where his particular ideology aligns with voters, and those such as Alaska and Maine where ranked-choice voting (RCV) weakens the spoiler effect.
Of course, the question is not just whether America’s political system allows for an insurgent party to compete. We also need to consider whether Musk’s offering is something that might interest American voters. Musk himself has described his upstart party as “centrist”, and excitedly referenced the fact that a large share of American voters are dissatisfied with the system. Although he is personally unpopular, with an approval rating of around 35%, 35% should be enough to win in certain more friendly areas against a split opposition.
A recent poll suggests up to 40% of Americans are open to considering voting for his party. Gallup has found that 80% of Americans are worried by Musk’s signature issue, the level of the US federal debt and increasing deficit. The “One Big Beautiful Bill” budget recently signed by Trump, which Musk loudly criticised for its effect on the deficit, is the most unpopular major piece of legislation in thirty years.
Of course, this does not mean that opposition to rising deficits will win Musk’s party a great deal of support. Americans have long claimed to be concerned about rising deficits but also oppose cuts to almost all government programs. Inasmuch as they keep re-electing politicians who vote for increasing deficits, the revealed preference of American voters is that they do not prioritise the debt in their votes as much as they claim. Indeed, many voters in the US hold a spectrum of right-leaning and left-leaning views about various issues simultaneously. Nevertheless, they often consistently vote for one party because they entirely reject the other, in a phenomenon dubbed “negative partisanship”. The loyalty of the two party’s voters is often based on dislike for the alternative rather than love of their own party. Better the option you dislike, than the one you actively hate. This means that, although a thin plurality of Americans identify as independents, most lean consistently towards one party or the other.
As discussed, the first-past-the-post system encourages this behaviour. This means that Musk should probably look to the two states that use RCV in their elections: Maine and Alaska. This system allows voters to rank multiple candidates on the ballot, which in theory prevents candidates perceived as potential spoilers from being squeezed. Both host Senate elections next year, and both have seen some success for alternatives to the two-party system in recent years.
Maine has form electing independents to statewide office. Although it consistently votes for Democratic presidential candidates, neither of its senators are technically democrats. One, Angus King, caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate but has won each of his three senate elections as an independent, facing both a Democrat and a Republican each time. The other, Susan Collins, is a Republican who last won in 2020 by a large margin even as Biden carried the state 53% - 44%.
Susan Collins is up for re-election next year, but polls consistently show that her approval rating has fallen dramatically. Public Policy polling recently found that more Trump voters disapprove of her than approve of her, by a margin of 52% to 30%, a startling statistic for a Republican senator.. Democrats have so far struggled to recruit a tested candidate to oppose her in the general election, which could create an opening for a well-funded third party. However, this could prove an uphill task against an incumbent Republican and a Democrat in a D-leaning state.
Alaska is the only other state to use RCV, after voters narrowly voted against scrapping the system in 2024. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R) has won her last three elections against organised opposition from the Republican party. In 2010, she lost the GOP primary to conservative Joe Miller but managed to win as a write-in candidate in the general election. In 2016, the same Joe Miller ran as a libertarian and won 29% of the vote, including a very high proportion of Trump voters, although Murkowski won with 44% as the Republican. In 2022, both Murkowski and Trump-endorsed Kelly Tshibaka advanced to the now ranked-choice general election as Republicans, and she won 54%-46% after all the votes were transferred. This meant that she won largely off the back of Democratic voters. Furthermore, in 2014 Alaska elected an independent, Bill Walker, as its governor.
Each of these cases shows that Alaska has already demonstrated its willingness to vote for third parties or independents, suggesting it could be fertile ground for the America Party next year. Nevertheless, the Republican up for re-election, Dan Sullivan, is reasonably popular according to the most recent surveys.
In conclusion, Elon Musk’s proposed America Party is attracting attention from the media and will not be poorly funded, eliminating two of the challenges faced by minor parties in the US. However, the electoral system perpetuates the dominance of the top two parties, and voters often vote for one mainly in order to stop the other, making it hard to imagine Musk’s party will make much of an impact in most of the country. The two states with ranked-choice electoral systems probably present the most fertile ground to the party, but both of their Senate contests currently look like uphill battles. Musk’s party appears more likely to achieve only limited electoral success, as billionaire (and former presidential candidate) Ross Perot’s Reform Party did, than to establish a new pillar of a three-party system, no matter what Americans say about their appetite for a third option.
By Harrison Moore