Third party (politics)
In politics, a "third party" refers to any political organization that stands apart from the dominant mainstream parties, often emerging as a protest against established policies. This concept is particularly relevant in two-party systems, where the primary competition is between two major parties. Third parties can embody a wide range of ideologies, including nationalism, populism, liberalism, and conservatism, often arising in response to specific social, economic, or political concerns.
Notably, third parties have had varying degrees of success in different regions. In Europe, they have gained traction, especially in response to discontent with mainstream parties, with parties like Podemos in Spain and nationalist groups in Scandinavia garnering significant support amid debates over immigration. Conversely, in the United States, third parties face substantial challenges due to the winner-takes-all electoral system, which tends to favor the larger Democratic and Republican parties. Historical instances include George Wallace's American Independent Party in 1968 and Ross Perot's candidacy in 1992, both of which illustrated the difficulties third parties encounter in achieving electoral success. Despite their challenges, discussions around electoral reform, such as implementing approval voting, suggest that third parties may have a better chance of influencing politics in the future.
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Third party (politics)
In politics, a third party is any political party that campaigns as a protest organization opposed to the establishment policies of a country's more mainstream political parties. Third parties are referred to usually within the context of a two-party system, or one in which only two major parties dominate the politics of a nation. Third parties often arise in response to specific concerns or fears held by the people of a country. For this reason, third parties can vary widely in their ideologies, from nationalism to populism to liberalism to conservatism.
In the early twenty-first century, third parties proved significantly more viable in European elections than in American ones, as many Europeans distrusted establishment political parties and began supporting lesser known splinter groups that more closely represented their views. Third parties in the United States, conversely, rarely influenced elections in any meaningful way, as they were generally suppressed by the wealthier and more well-known Republican and Democratic Parties.
Background
The term third party suggests the place of alternative political parties in the landscape of a nation's politics: that of outside forces in primarily two-party systems. In culturally Western regions of the world—such as Europe, Australia, Canada, and the United States—third parties are organizations that hold highly partisan views that nonetheless represent the opinions of voters who reject the consensus stances of the more mainstream political parties of their countries. Third parties may enjoy the fervent support of even a significant percentage of a nation's populace but still struggle to compete nationally with these more established organizations, which are often better funded and have more name recognition.
Third parties have had mixed electoral records in Europe. Since the mid-twentieth century, the political systems of many European countries have been controlled chiefly by two types of political parties: center-left social democrats and center-right Christian democrats. Center-left social democratic parties support liberalism, an ideology that promotes progressive and open-minded social and political views and seeks to use democracy to provide the citizens of a country with socialist benefits such as health care and education. Center-right Christian democrats, meanwhile, combine traditional Christian values with socialist programs such as welfare. The term center in these party names indicates that each type of party is moderate in its views and does not stray into extreme partisanship.
Ideology is the main difference between the major centrist parties and third parties of European countries. Third parties often capitalize on the feelings of voters by taking unapologetically partisan views, presenting themselves as capable of accomplishing what their centrist rivals cannot. Many international media outlets noted that third parties were on the rise in Europe in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. The parties appeared in response to various sociopolitical and economic events that were affecting Europe at the time. In 2015 in Spain, the leftist, anti-establishment Podemos party and the more conservative, anti-corruption Citizens party, both third parties in Spanish politics, earned a combined 35 percent of the national vote in the country's general election.
Many other European third parties championed nationalism and strong control of immigration as the best paths forward for their respective countries. The issue of immigration arose in the mid-2010s in the midst of the European migrant crisis, which saw hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern refugees travel into Europe to seek asylum. Many Europeans opposed the centrist parties' acceptance of these migrants into their countries, as they feared the destruction of their national identity. Various third parties soon began championing these people's views.
In Austria, the far-right Freedom Party, led by Norbert Hofer, took up the cause of nationalism by vehemently opposing the acceptance of migrants into the country. Similarly nationalistic, anti-immigrant parties enjoyed surges in national support in the Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Denmark, and Finland in the wake of the migrant crisis. Many of these parties claimed critical percentages of their countries' national votes—sometimes around 20 percent—in the mid-2010s, but they still lacked much of the mainstream appeal of more centrist parties.
Overview
Third parties were much less influential in the United States. As of the 2020s, the last third-party candidate to earn electoral votes and carry states in a presidential election was George Wallace, who won five states for the American Independent Party in the 1968 election with his platform supporting racial segregation. Businessman Ross Perot, another Independent, won 19 percent of the popular vote in the presidential election of 1992, the highest ever won by a third-party candidate, although he failed to win a single electoral vote.
Political scientists believe American third parties continue to fail at the polls simply because of the way the United States' elections are constructed. The United States features a winner-takes-all electoral system, in which the candidate who earns the most votes in a district wins the election.
This is also true, on a larger scale, in presidential elections, in which the candidate who earns the most votes in a state collects all the electoral votes from that state. The candidate who wins at least 270 electoral votes wins the election. In such a system, candidates know they have the greatest possible chance of winning if only two parties are on the ballot. Therefore, the United States' two main political parties, the Democratic and Republican Parties, attempt to ally themselves with as many splinter groups as they can to avoid losing votes to a third party. Indeed, in the 2000 presidential election, Green Party candidate Ralph Nader was accused of attracting votes that might otherwise have helped elect Democrat Al Gore to the presidency over Republican George W. Bush.
American third-party candidates also fail to make significant political headway for a variety of other reasons. Democratic or Republican candidates may suddenly take up one of the third-party candidate's main issues in an attempt to attract third-party supporters to their side. The Democratic and Republican Parties are also considerably wealthier than third parties such as the Green Party of the United States or the American Independent Party. The two major parties can afford to finance state primary elections and nationally televised debates. Third-party candidates generally do not attend these because they do not meet required minimum national polling percentages. Following the 2020 US presidential election, NBC News reported that third-party and independent candidates received around 1.5 percent of the total vote in that year's election, a decrease from the 5 percent of the total vote they received in the 2016 presidential election. However, that number rose slightly in the 2024 election, where third party candidates received 2.13 percent, or over 3 million votes.
Political scientists have suggested that American third parties would have better chances at winning elections in an approval voting system, in which citizens cast one vote each for as many candidates as they want. This would allow third-party candidates to poll more highly without handing the election to a Democrat or Republican by siphoning votes from one of the parties.
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