With a single social media post, Elon Musk stirred up a long standing debate in American Politics: can a third party be viable?
Experts say America’s appetite for a third choice may be high in theory, but when you combine hurdles surrounding ballot access at the state level with voters’ appetite for who the third party option actually turns out to be, support often craters.
In Musk’s case, a Quinnipiac University national poll of registered voters found that gathering support for an "America Party" with Musk at the helm would likely indeed be a challenge. Despite nearly half supporting a third party in general, 77% said they would not consider joining if Elon Musk created such a party "as an alternative to the Republican and Democratic parties," with 17 saying they would consider joining.
In New York, Shawn Donahue, clinical assistant professor of political science at the University at Buffalo, said the fact that Musk appears to be positioning himself to the right of Trump could make it an even heavier lift in blue New York.
“When you ask people if they would like to have a third party, people say ‘oh yeah, I’d like to have a third party,'” said Donahue. “When you tell people who the party is, who the candidate is, that drops considerably.”
Donahue told Spectrum News 1 that New York’s election law would likely make even getting candidates on the ballot a challenge for Musk.
“We don’t run elections narrationally — they’re state by state,” he said. “If you want to try to get on the ballot as an individual candidate, let alone gaining major party status, it takes a lot of time, money and effort.”
He said in New York, a candidate must meet a high signature threshold to even get on the ballot as an independent — but to achieve major party ballot status you need to have run a candidate in the previous election for president or governor and garner 2% of the total vote or 130,000 votes, whichever is greater, to achieve automatic ballot access for that party.
“It doesn’t sound like that much but in 2020 it took the number of parties that have major party status from eight to four,” he said.
Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, argued that system could actually work in Musk’s favor in the long run relative to other similar efforts to drum up support for a third party.
“That could make it easier for an Elon Musk with infinite amounts of money to try to stage a political party to try to convince two percent of the people who vote for president or governor to vote for his candidate,” she said.
It's a situation that she insists points to a major flaw in how New York state recognizes political parties.
“Parties should be bottom-up organizations — not top down.” she said. “The way in which they should be started is by large numbers of people getting together because they have similar goals.
Also up for debate is if Musk’s party name would be viable in New York state where the word "American" is not allowed in party names. New York prohibits certain words like "Independence," that are deemed to be confusing for voters.
Lerner said adding "independence" to the list was a no brainer, but where "America" stands is unclear.
“People thought that they were not registered for a party, but they checked the box for Independence Party because they thought it meant independent, not affiliated,” Lerner said. “It was confusing to voters, it was borderline fraudulent so the state has outlawed using that name. I don’t know that the word ‘America’ in and of itself is confusing.”