Originally posted by the Voice of America.
Voice of America content is produced by the Voice of America,
a United States federal government-sponsored entity, and is in
the public domain.


Is Polarized America Primed for a Breakout Third Party?

Dora Mekouar

   The ouster of Republican Liz Cheney from her leadership position in the
   House of Representatives couldprovidefertile ground for the emergence
   of an alternate party, according to political scientist Bernard Tamas.

   "I would say that the time is basically ripe for
   athird-partychallenge,and, largely, the reason is because of the level
   of polarization in American politics, especially the movement to the
   right by the Republican Party,"says Tamas, an associate
   professoratValdosta State Universityin Georgiaand the author ofThe
   Demise and Rebirth of American Third Parties.

   But even if a third party were to emerge, Tamas says, the history of
   American politics suggests it could be short-lived and enjoy limited
   success at the polls.
   Independent Ross Perot (C) seen here with Democratic Presidential
   nominee Governor Bill Clinton (L) and President George Bush at the 1992
   presidential debate in Michigan, went on to win 19% of the popular vote
   in the November 1992 election.

   House Republicans stripped Cheney, from Wyoming, of her post as
   conference chair after she publicly broke withformer President
   DonaldTrump, rejecting his baseless claims of widespread fraud in
   theNovember2020 presidential election, which he lost to Democrat Joe
   Biden.

   "If you look at the two parties right now, what the Democrats do is
   much more with opposition is kind of integrate them.'¦ It's very much
   of a big net strategy,"Tamas says."But the Republicans have been moving
   more and more towards pushing out moderates and pushing out anyone who
   challenges former President Trump."

   And those circumstances, he says, are historically consistent with
   other times when third parties haveemergedin the United States.

   Third-party disrupters

   The Populist Party, which championed poor farmers,emergedin the 1890s
   and was gone by 1900.During its brief time,however, it posed enough of
   a threat to Democrats that the party eventually adopted some of the
   Populist Party's ideals.

   In 1912, the more progressive wing of the Republican party, led by
   former President Teddy Roosevelt, split with the RepublicanParty to
   form the Progressive Party.Roosevelt went on to win a bigger share of
   the popular vote than William Taft, the Republican nominee, but both
   lost to Democrat Woodrow Wilson. While the division hurt Republicans at
   the polls, the move did eventually push the RepublicanParty more to the
   center.

           National Progressive Convention, Chicago, Aug. 6, 1912.

   It is the fear of splitting the vote that can work against third-party
   candidates, which helps the two major partiesretaintheir dominance in
   politics.

   "When a voter enters a voter booth, they have to make a calculation,
   and they may prefer somebody who they don't think is going to win, and
   it makes no sense to throw away your vote,"says Alexander Cohen, an
   assistant professor of political science at Clarkson Universityin New
   York."And the people who donate money to campaigns, the people who
   operate in politics, they, in turn, recognize that this is a pattern
   and so they very seldom throw their support behind a third-party
   candidacy,because it's not going to succeed."

   Deeply entrenched

   Cohen saysit'sdifficult to transition away from atwo-partysystem
   without fundamentally changing the structure of government, as well as
   rules for campaigns and campaign finance.

   "In America, the two parties have spent a lot of time and energy, and
   written laws that favor their own continuation and make it very
   difficult for third parties to emerge,"Cohen says."In some states,
   there are laws that mean that third parties require more signatures to
   get on the ballot than the major parties, for whom it's automatic. So,
   the two major partiesdon'twant competitors,and they've designed a
   system that further makes it difficult."
   Voters sign in to cast their ballot at a polling place in Philadelphia,
   Pennsylvania, April 26, 2016.

   It'spossible that a third-party candidate could prove victorious in
   smaller local elections, according to Cohen, but he says
   thetwo-partysystem is here to stay in the more significant contests.

   "You'll note that Liz Cheney isn't leaving the Republican Party. As
   soon as she does,she'sdone in politics,"he says."The players who you
   would most expect to say,'I'm stepping away, we're creating a new
   movement,'aren't doing so because they know that is not the way to get
   their policies represented."

   Tamas agrees that it is unlikely that third parties will ever
   consistently win key elections. Their key influence, he says, has
   always been through disruption that leads to more moderation in the
   major parties.

   "Compared to most other countries, third parties (in the U.S.) are
   weak, so this leaves open oneparticular strategythat they have, which
   istoattack one of the parties, disrupt the politics, temporarily, and
   with the expectation that this is not going to have a permanent
   position in politics,"says Tamas."It's going to be just creating a
   course correction."

.