A new third party for US politics: 3 essential reads on what that means
Naomi Schalit, Senior Editor, Politics + Society, The Conversation US
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Andrew Yang, losing candidate for president and New York City mayor, is one of the founders of the Forward Party. Rob Kim/Getty Images
In June 2022, Gallup asked participants in a U.S. survey about their party membership. “In politics,” pollsters asked, “as of today, do you consider yourself a Republican, a Democrat or an independent?”
The largest segment of participants – 43% – said they were independent. Republicans and Democrats represented 27% each.
Note the lower case “i” in independent. That means it’s not a party, as the Democrats and Republicans are. Actual political parties have policies, they have big bank accounts, they have organizations in every state, and they have a place on the ballot in elections.
But if the leaders of a new, centrist political party whose formation was announced on July 28, 2022, accomplish their goal, the “Forward Party” will attract many voters who no longer identify as Democrats or Republicans and it will become a force for moderation – and an institution – in U.S. electoral politics.
“How will we solve the big issues facing America?” the founders said at a news conference. “Not Left. Not Right. Forward.”
Here are three stories from The Conversation’s archives that analyze the chances of third-party success at changing the U.S. political system.
The Founding Fathers didn’t think highly of political parties, with Alexander Hamilton, second from right, saying they were a ‘most fatal disease.’ Stock Montage/Getty Images
“Alexander Hamilton called political parties a ‘most fatal disease,’” Cohen writes. “James Madison renounced the ‘violence of faction,’ and George Washington feared that an overly successful party would create ‘frightful despotism.’”
Still, parties persisted as the vehicles of electoral politics in the country, evolving into the current two-party system from a variety of parties that emerged and died over the past 200 years. An upstart third party is unlikely to dislodge the status quo, Cohen says.
“The modern Republicans and Democrats are unlikely to go the way of the Whigs, Federalists and Anti-Federalists, regardless of recent political earthquakes.”
“The American electoral system is the primary reason why the U.S. is the sole major democracy with only two parties consistently capable of electing public officials,” writes Hershey. “Votes are counted in most American elections using plurality rules, or ‘winner take all.’ Whoever gets the most votes wins the single seat up for election.”
But in many other democracies, Hershey says, multiple political parties can thrive because of a different system of electing representatives. For example, Hershey writes, there are widely used systems that award seats proportionally to the percentage of votes a party wins.
“In the Netherlands, for instance,” writes Hershey, “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.”
If that system existed in the U.S., that would mean even a small party would be smart to run Congressional candidates, because even if the party only got 5% of the vote, “they could win 5% of the state’s U.S. House seats.”
But a caveat: Those voters who call themselves “independent,” or say they’re disappointed by or disillusioned with political parties, are still influenced by vestigial party sentiment. Pollsters find, writes Hershey, “that most of these ‘independents’ actually lean toward either the Democrats or the Republicans, and their voting choices are almost as intensely partisan as those who do claim a party affiliation.”
Tamas, who has written a book on U.S. third parties, says that they tend to emerge when Democrats and Republicans are politically polarized – something that has happened periodically since the Civil War. That polarization between parties means “larger groups of voters end up being not represented by either one, and the intense contention between them also increases political dissatisfaction.”
For the 50 years after the Civil War, the two parties were very polarized. Third parties were “aggressive and strong” during that period, Tamas writes.
But their aim wasn’t to make themselves an institution in a new, multiparty democracy – as the Forward Party’s leaders hope now.
For example, the Greenback Party in the 1870s and the Populist Party in the 1890s both aimed, via electoral victories, to force the major parties to adopt policies supporting “poor farmers and opposing business monopolies.” The Populist Party was especially successful in pressing the Democrats to embrace those positions.
Tamas predicted in 2021 that a new, centrist third party would emerge – very much like the party that made its debut on July 28. He noted that challenging the Trump-influenced GOP would be a main focus of such a party.
“The new party could gain strategic advantages by fielding candidates in local and state elections in more moderate places where some Republican candidates have nevertheless chosen to follow their party to the extreme,” he writes.
But even if the Forward Party raises money and fields successful candidates, it may not be long in the U.S. political landscape.
“The Progressive Party existed for less than a decade, for example,” Tamas writes. “But by strategically winning the votes of moderate conservatives and thereby undermining Republicans’ electoral goals, even if briefly, a new third party could stop the GOP from hurtling farther down an extreme and undemocratic path.”
The start of the general election in the Keystone State was a mixed bag for Democrats trying to flip the seat of retiring GOP Sen. Pat Toomey. Their nominee, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, was sidelined by a stroke just before he won the primary and has been off the trail recuperating. But then they got the Republican opponent they wanted in celebrity surgeon Mehmet Oz.
The Donald Trump-backed candidate narrowly won the GOP nomination after a recount, but not without his image taking a serious hit -- weeks of attack ads from Republican rival Dave McCormick and his allies had driven up Oz's negatives. (In a Fox survey ahead of the primary, for example, 46% of GOP voters had an unfavorable view of Oz.) The race is expected to tighten as some of those Republican voters get behind Oz now that he's the party nominee.
But Democrats' message is picking up where the primary left off. Fetterman's TV spots, which lean into an "us vs. Washington" theme that never mentions the candidate's party ID, repeat that he's "from Pennsylvania, for Pennsylvania" -- an implicit knock on Oz, who has said he moved from New Jersey in late 2020. Republicans are equally happy to be running against Fetterman, a former Bernie Sanders supporter who handily defeated his more moderate primary challenger. But in a state that Biden carried and with the GOP primary forcing Oz to the right, this seat is still the most likely to flip in the fall.
AP file
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D) vs. Adam Laxalt (R)
Incumbent: Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto
Nevada moves up one spot, trading places with Georgia, where the fundamentals of the state (for example, past presidential performance) would seem to give Republicans a better chance of unseating a Democratic incumbent. But the Republican Senate nominee in the Silver State, former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt, is a more tested candidate than the GOP nominee in Georgia, ex-NFL star Herschel Walker.
That may not be saying much considering Walker, a political neophyte, is widely seen as the biggest wild-card candidate of the cycle and Laxalt lost his last bid for statewide office (the 2018 gubernatorial race). Laxalt, however, has held statewide office before and is the grandson of the former governor and senator with the same last name. Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, who was on the ballot just last year, also started the cycle as a better defined (and funded) Democratic incumbent than Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, who hasn't faced voters in this transient state in six years. Masto has a tough road ahead, to be sure -- and fissures in the state Democratic Party aren't helping -- but the Supreme Court ruling on abortion could work in Democrats' favor in a state where even the most recent GOP governor supported abortion rights.
Laxalt sought to downplay the political impact of the court's decision last month, saying in a statement that abortion rights were "settled law" in the state. But that likely won't stop Democrats from pointing to his praise for the decision and arguing that he'd be another Republican vote in the Senate should Congress attempt to pass an abortion ban.
AP file
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) vs. Herschel Walker (R)
Incumbent: Democrat Raphael Warnock
Even Democrats are somewhat skeptical about a recent Quinnipiac University poll that showed Warnock, who's running for a full six-year term after winning a special election last year, ahead of GOP challenger Walker by 10 points among registered voters. But even if that margin was too big to be true -- there aren't yet many other public surveys for comparison -- it was notably wider than Georgia's gubernatorial matchup, suggesting there's something specific to this race, rather than the poll itself, going on here.
The margin was also a departure from Warnock's and Walker's neck-and-neck standing in Quinnipiac's January poll, which could reflect recent troublesome headlines for Walker, who received negative ratings for honesty in the June survey. His campaign recently acknowledged, for example, that he has three children by women he was not married to, in addition to his son by his former wife. That's opened him up to charges of hypocrisy given his public criticism of absentee fathers, especially in Black families. (Walker just went up with his first ad of the general election, and the positive spot -- a hybrid ad paid for by the National Republican Senatorial Committee -- doesn't offer more than bland platitudes about him wanting to serve Georgia.)
What's most encouraging for Democrats facing a tough national environment may be that Warnock is still viewed more positively than Biden. The senator's job approval rating was at 49% in the Quinnipiac poll, compared with 33% for the President. That's some impressive separation the first-term senator has been able to create from the White House in a state not predisposed to vote Democratic. The poll was mostly conducted after the Supreme Court's abortion decision on June 24, so Warnock's advantage over Walker may also reflect some of the immediate backlash to that ruling, which won't necessarily be sustained through the fall.
The good news for Republicans? A plurality of Georgians said inflation was the most urgent issue facing the state, which means the GOP still has four months to double down on messages like this one, from One Nation, accusing Warnock of voting for "reckless spending" that, the ad contends, has led to higher costs for Georgians.
AP file
Incumbent: Democrat Mark Kelly
Arizona is hosting one of the few outstanding GOP primaries that will help shape how competitive things are in the fall. Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly is running for a full six-year term after winning a special election in 2020. He's used his fundraising advantage to go on the air while his would-be GOP opponents duke it out amongst themselves.
Trump-backed Blake Masters has the support of billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel and the Club for Growth. Solar energy entrepreneur Jim Lamon is largely self-funding his campaign, which has spent nearly $8 million on TV, including future reservations, according to AdImpact data from the beginning of July. State Attorney General Mark Brnovich -- a frequent Trump target for having helped certify Biden's win in the state -- was once thought to have been the front-runner because he holds statewide elected office, but there's little sign he's put together a competitive campaign.
The Trump backing should position Masters well in a GOP primary, but he's embraced the former President's election lies and downplayed the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol -- a potential vulnerability in a purple state in the fall. More worrisome for some Republicans may be Masters' suggestion, as reported by CNN's Kyung Lah, that the US could privatize Social Security, which isn't likely to go over well in retiree-heavy Arizona. While he doesn't yet have an opponent, Kelly hasn't escaped scrutiny. GOP-aligned groups are trying to tie the freshman senator, who now has a voting record, to Biden and the party in power in Washington.
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Incumbent: Republican Ron Johnson
Sen. Ron Johnson is the most vulnerable Republican incumbent of 2022. And with his favorability numbers mired in the 30s, it's no surprise his campaign has been rolling out a series of positive ads featuring constituents testifying directly to the camera about what a good senator he's been. In a June Marquette Law School poll, 37% of Wisconsin voters viewed Johnson favorably. The two-term senator, who broke a term limit pledge to run again, has been known to generate controversy. Revelations that his office was involved in an effort to send then-Vice President Mike Pence a slate of fake electors prompted several of his Democratic challengers to call on him to resign. (Johnson has dismissed the story, saying they were staff-level discussions.)
But Democrats have discounted him before. His 41% favorability rating in October 2016 -- just before he won a second term -- isn't much better than his numbers now. And even if their incumbent isn't in as strong a position as they'd like, the good news for Republicans is that Biden's job approval in the Badger State is at 40% -- the lowest mark in Marquette's polling since he took office. GOP enthusiasm to vote also outpaced Democratic enthusiasm -- 67% to 58% -- in the Marquette survey.
The task for Democrats, who pick their nominee on August 9, is to show that Johnson has changed and is no longer the senator Wisconsinites elected twice. The primary is the last truly unsettled Democratic contest in a competitive general election state. Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes continues to lead the primary field with 25% in the Marquette poll, but his lead over Milwaukee Bucks executive Alex Lasry (21%) is within the margin of error. State Treasurer Sarah Godlewski was at 9%, while Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson was at 7%. Marquette tested hypothetical general election matchups for the first time this cycle, finding a margin-of-error contest regardless of the pairing.
AP file
Incumbent: Democrat Maggie Hassan
A recent 30-second, direct-to-camera spot from Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan says a lot about the contours of this race. "The Supreme Court has taken away a woman's most fundamental freedom," the first-year senator says, before raising the specter of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and a GOP-controlled Senate trying to ban abortion nationwide.
Hassan is running for reelection in a state that increasingly votes blue in federal elections and has a GOP governor who supports abortion rights. Still, a bad national environment for Democrats, combined with the Granite State's swingy nature, has Hassan on notice. Even if most of her would-be GOP challengers aren't very well known ahead of the September 13 primary, it may not take much more than a generic Republican to unseat her if that's the way the winds are blowing in November.
That explains why Hassan, whose campaign announced it had raised more than $5 million in the second quarter, is using the Supreme Court's abortion ruling to try to shift the conversation toward a hypothetical Republican-controlled Washington that New Hampshire voters may not like. The great unknown, however, is whether frustrations with the economy and dissatisfaction with the direction of the country will outweigh other concerns in November.
AP file
Rep. Ted Budd (R) vs. Cheri Beasley (D)
Incumbent: Republican Richard Burr (retiring)
Republican Rep. Ted Budd enters the general election with a built-in advantage in the race to succeed retiring GOP Sen. Richard Burr given that Trump twice carried the state. And while the conservative congressman's fundraising hasn't impressed, outside GOP groups are carrying the weight on TV, attacking Democratic nominee Cheri Beasley's judicial record. Local TV stations took down one of those ads, but the soft-on-crime attack line is a central message Republicans are deploying against the first Black woman elected as chief justice to the state Supreme Court.
Beasley has responded by touting her law enforcement support, including with a spot that features sheriffs and police captains. "Cheri's always had our backs, and we know she always will," Richmond County Sheriff Mark Gulledge says. Another recent Beasley ad tries to distance the candidate from Democratic control of Washington, as she says, "Neither political party is getting it right" while promising to hold Washington accountable.
Democrats, meanwhile, are trying to portray Budd, who was boosted by the campaign arm of the Club for Growth in the primary, as too extreme for the state. Senate Majority PAC, a major Democratic super PAC, invested in this race after initially leaving it off its early reservations -- a sign that Democrats haven't counted this one out even if it's less of a priority than other GOP-held seats in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
AP file
Incumbent: Republican Marco Rubio
GOP Sen. Marco Rubio still has the advantage in this race, but Democratic Rep. Val Demings, who's heavily favored to win the Senate nomination on August 23, is keeping the race interesting by raising impressive money.
While Rubio has the backing of some major law enforcement groups in the state, Demings is leaning into her background as the former Orlando police chief to try to refute his attempts to tie her to the national party. "In the Senate, I'll protect Florida from bad ideas like defunding the police. That's just crazy," she says in her first ad.
But in a state that has grown incrementally Republican in recent elections, Demings would face a difficult general election against Rubio, who has built a national profile over his two terms in the Senate and should benefit from political tailwinds this fall.
AP file
J.D. Vance (R) vs. Rep. Tim Ryan (D)
Incumbent: Republican Rob Portman (retiring)
Rep. Tim Ryan, the Democrat running an uphill campaign to succeed retiring GOP Sen. Rob Portman, is also trying to show his support for law enforcement. "Tim Ryan knows defunding the police is ridiculous," the Stark County sheriff says in a recent ad for the Democratic nominee.
Ryan, a 10-term congressman who easily won his May primary, is up against "Hillbilly Elegy" author JD Vance, who emerged from one of the ugliest GOP contests of the cycle helped by Trump's backing. The former President has twice won Ohio, which hasn't been very hospitable of late to Democrats running for federal statewide office -- US Sen. Sherrod Brown being the notable exception.
That's why Ryan, who once challenged Nancy Pelosi for House Democratic leader, is being vocal about distancing himself from his party. "When (President Barack) Obama's trade deal threatened jobs here, I voted against it," he says in another ad as he walks through Youngstown sporting a gray hoodie. "And I voted with Trump on trade," he adds, trying to project an image of Buckeye State authenticity. It's not clear that'll be enough against a Trump-backed candidate in a nationalized election, but it may be Ryan's best shot. And with his campaign announcing that he raised $9 million in the second quarter that ended June 30, it looks like he'll at least have the resources to carry that message.
AP file
Sen. Michael Bennet (D) vs. Joe O'Dea (R)
Incumbent: Democrat Michael Bennet
Colorado steals the 10th spot on this list from Missouri. What's going on in the Centennial State? Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet is running for a third full term against businessman Joe O'Dea, whose emergence from last month's GOP primary makes this race competitive. (Democrats had spent millions trying to help his primary opponent win because they thought he'd be a weaker general election candidate.)
As a Republican who supports abortion rights in the early stages of pregnancy, O'Dea brings a unique profile to the race. Colorado has trended blue in recent federal elections -- Biden won it by more than 13 points in 2020, the same year GOP Sen. Cory Gardner was unseated by 9 points. But Bennet's previous elections have been close. In 2016, for example, he prevailed by only about 6 points against an underwhelming opponent whom the national GOP had abandoned. Against a more formidable Republican challenger in a tough year for Democrats, Bennet could be vulnerable.
In Missouri, meanwhile, the Republican field is still unsettled ahead of the August 2 primary. Looming over the party is the possibility of disgraced former Gov. Eric Greitens winning the nomination, which is the only way this seat would be competitive for Democrats.
The entrance of independent candidate John Wood could potentially complicate the race. Wood, a former senior investigator for the House January 6 committee, describes himself as a "lifelong Republican" and has said he would back McConnell for Senate leader, if elected. But if Greitens is the GOP nominee, Wood's candidacy could end up splitting the anti-Greitens vote in the general election, making it more likely the controversial Republican keeps this seat in party hands. We'll revisit Missouri's spot on the list after the crucial GOP primary.
Andrew Yang, losing candidate for president and New York City mayor, is one of the founders of the Forward Party. Rob Kim/Getty Images
The Founding Fathers didn’t think highly of political parties, with Alexander Hamilton, second from right, saying they were a ‘most fatal disease.’ Stock Montage/Getty Images
The 1852 Whig Party presidential campaign poster. Within 10 years, the party was no more. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
